18 Below Zero
by Red Molly
Summary: Victor Creed's reaction to his brother's demise leads him back home to the backwoods of Canada and into a situation larger than he bargained for. Sabretooth/OC/Wolverine
1. History

Canadian cold is the most profound kind, and the afternoon light seemed to shiver as it filtered through the treelimbs outside of the morgue. Hoar frost stood like fur on the ambulance, the porch railings of the mortuary, and the window-frames. The light that filtered in from the narrow windows above the work-table and on the West side of the room was blue accordingly. It lay in slats across the delicacy of a cadaver, ribs curling above the edges of the body bag like a set of grasping, emaciated fingers. A flip of the toggle and the powerful overhead drove the blue slats into the corner of the room. Didn't do much for the ambience, however.

Katya, hands looped behind her back, bent at the waist was peering over the body on her table. Taking notes in her head for later, her lips moved as if she were already speaking the words into the battered recorder's microphone. She glanced up at her brother. "……a cougar….?"

It was a human body, but you could have just as well called it a carcass, as little as there was left of it. The wolves had gotten to it a good while ago, being that the cadaver had been cleaned from the inside out and the bones were already starting to bleach. What made it interesting was the skull. There was a very clear set of three claw marks on it, scoring deeply across the forehead. Stretched, ragged skin still clung to the edges, dry and curling.

"Well, we didn't see any tracks but….maybe? I mean, that we have this is improbable as is… Why wouldn't we have seen tracks?" Sasha cocked one bushy brow and stayed where he stood. His sister had been known to throw scalpels at people who breathed on her cadavers and he was not exempt. The staff had left the last scalpel-blade buried in the aluminum doorpost as a reminder. You don't fuck with a genius at work.

"Because, Sashenka, your people do not pay attention to detail. Not only that, but he's been lying in a hollow for the last three weeks….at the very least. They had time to clean him out."

"Him?"

"Da. Narrow hips, broader shoulders, longer femur, larger bones in general….male. Big male."

Did she ever speak in complete sentences?

"I heard that, Sasha."

'Bitch,' he thought very clearly. He smiled, took a sip from his coffee thermos, and exited stage right out the swinging doors of the mortuary. The clatter off of the door behind him suggested something like a tray instead of her usual choice of projectiles.

Sasha Arkady Pavlovich was a law-man. His sister Katya Irina Pavlovna was a (nerd with a sick sense of humor) medical examiner. They were fraternal twins, which was bad enough, and one half Russian, which made things that much worse. Co-morbid, as it were. The meth cookers were terrified of Sasha, and even more so of his father Pavlov before him. The doctors had a healthy respect for Katya and her scalpel.

Deep Canada was a good place for defectors of the Soviet Union, and when Irina Andreiovna fled, pregnant and widowed into the back forty of Alberta during the spring of 1948, the mountains around her did her trust good. Canada never really tolerated Soviet organisms anyway, and the rolling ground preceding the Canadian Rockies were true to that. Grande Cache, which barely rated a dot on the map, became her home.

The baby's name was Pavlov, and he spoke English with the same stubborn attention to detail that he insisted on speaking Russian. Canadian citizen that he was, Pavlov attended school in Huddle all the way through high school, and then earned his law degree from the University of Ottawa. He wasn't a rider, he wasn't a cowman, he was a brain. And sometimes a trapper. Something about his Russian heritage had led the boy to suck up to the nearest trapper he could find and left his mother redolent in good mink, fox, and beaver pelts for the rest of her life. The point, though, was that Alberta was cow country, and while he appreciated the fact, Pavlov did better with a pen in his hand than he did with a rope. He had assumed that this would be the case with his children. It was not.

Not that they weren't bright. But Ottawa was not where they belonged. Sasha was a brawler, and Katya…well, she attacked her science with the same fervor she put into throwing things. You can only break so many noses on the softball team before they don't let you play anymore. Pavlov blamed it on their Irish mother, who in turn blamed it on Irina Andreiovna. Russian genetics proved more useful out here than did Irish ones. The twins were leaning on that whenever they took Rt. 40 south out of Grande Prairie down to Huddle in a 1978 Chevy Nova and began their. Irina Andreiovna did not live much longer after the return of her grandchildren, but she glowed throughout that last period of her life. These bright stars of hers belonged in the small town, south and west of Grande Prairie, and here they bloomed.

As her brother's boot-steps receded, Katya switched on her recorder and began to speak. She began removing the cranial cavity from the jaw, dismantling the skull.

"Dr. Katya I. Pavlovna, Exam Room Three, Grand Cache, Alberta, Canada. Date 2009, October 15. Time….," she looked at the clock. "Time 19:45 PM. Skeletal remains of an adult male, somewhere between thirty-five and fifty, dental records forthcoming. Body discovered in the extreme southwest corner of Willmore Wilderness Park yesterday morning. Worth noting that it's been a steady 18 below for the last week……. COD appears to be a broken neck cause by sharp-force trauma to the front of the skull with a three pronged object."

She paused, hefted the dome up to face level, staring into the empty sockets. "You STINK," she said, addressing the skull. "Something we're going to have to talk to the biologists about is the width of this set of claw marks, Katya-me-love. I mean, they're deep enough for a cougar but are they wide enough….…..?"

Just to satisfy her own curiosity, she placed a gloved hand across it, matching her fingers to the scores across the skull's brow.

"Yeah, that'll make a whole lot of sense. 'Unidentified male, clawed to death with a set of fake nails.' Wait, no, it was a garden trowel! A frog gig! A broken trap?"

She paused at that one, looked at the curvature of the claw pattern and rejected it. "Not even in Grand Cache, darling. Not even here. And sure as _hell_ not in Willmore. At least, not the garden trowel or the fake nails…." Willmore Wilderness Park was a thousand square miles of mainly alpine and sub-alpine ground, and people with fake nails were not likely to frequent it this time of year. Waaaaaay too much chance of freezing that nice manicure off.

She took measurements of the width and depth of the scores, their length, and groped for the math to figure what kind of force was required. Not coming up with it, she made a note to call her ex, Peter, and pass off her measurements. He was a mathematician, an adjunct professor, and a total lush. Odds were good that he'd have results for her by the end of the week. It was probably trickier stuff than she was already imagining, and Petra always did like a challenge.

Then it hit her and she cursed herself for her flight of fancy. Skulls aren't thick, (despite all of Sasha's behavior toward the contrary). The only way a set of scratches could have not punched through was if they were done post-mortem. She said as much aloud, but chose not to comment that the idea still nagged her.

"We STILL have to talk to the biology people. Different reason, but still."

Katya always ran an examination until she was through. In this case, that meant she put the body in a tray and slid it into the freezer at 3:30 AM. She popped the tape out of the recorder, and locked it in a filing cabinet against the wall. Swinging by her office, she downed the last of the thick, greasy coffee in the pot and headed for the door, praying that she had remembered to hook her car up so it would start.

* * *

The cadaver's ribs were now closed away in the body-bag, lifting it about eight inches off of the shelf it lay on and suggesting the possibility that the heavy plastic could burst at any point in time and the skeletal remains would drag themselves out of the bag and stand up like some walking A&P study-aid. Even if the skeletal system could become self-aware and get out of the body-bag, there remained the problem that it was locked on a shelf in a refrigerated cabinet and technically could not move any more than nine or ten inches up or down. No one had ever put any thought to what it would be like to wake up in a morgue cabinet, nor what it would take to be able to get out.


	2. That Ain't No Coffee Pot

…………………………….and true to form, she was back in the office by 8 the next morning. Katya kicked open the door (it was frozen closed) and flipped on the thermostat as soon as she stepped into the hall. Her gloves didn't come off until she'd made the office, and then it was to pour new coffee grounds on top of the old ones and fill the coffee maker with water. The machine was ancient, and made a god-_awful_ howling noise about three minutes into the process of juicing the coffee beans.

She plopped down in her ratty parlor chair to wait on the coffee. Watching her condensed breath rise toward the ceiling, she loosened her blue scarf and started going over the list of what was to be done today. She ticked them off singly, mouthing the words as they came to her. Somewhere between 'Call Peter with the math problem' and 'hook car battery up so it will start' (she almost regretted the purchase of an electric car, but it meant not having to pay for petrol……) she began rolling her head back and forth on her shoulders just for something to do. The coffee pot began to wail, the light began melting its way through the hoar frost on the windows, and the body in the examining room was the only thing that suggested that the day would be more than mundane.

There was a mirror on the other side of the room, situated behind the door, and if she leaned back in her chair, she could _just_ see her face in it. She studied it, letting her mind drift. The nose was patrician, like her father's, and the skin was pale, suggesting that she'd better imbibe some of the hot sludge trickling into the coffee pot before her body temperature dropped any farther. The hair, dark like Irina Andreiovna's, hung down over the back of the chair in a long single braid. Shorter pieces sprouted around her face, and there you could see Katya's Irish mother Eileen. Eileen was a blonde, delicate and freckled, but the only thing her horse of a daughter had inherited from her was the freckles and the tart speech. Once, when they were six, Sasha had connected the dots between her freckles with a permanent marker while she slept, and it had taken a full week for the ink to come off of her skin. He didn't get his come-upping for six years, and then the retribution was royal. A gently evil smile tugged around her crooked mouth at the memory and her eyes began to close…

What happened next, Katya initially blamed on the coffee pot. The metallic **BANG **found her whipping her head around toward it, expecting to see the machine melting off the side of the table in a final howl but……hmmm. Not the case. She sat up straight in the chair, eyes wide, ears open.

Fifteen seconds passed (she'd counted them) and then it sounded again.

**BANG.**

Followed by a horrific scratching sound, like a clawed animal trying to dig its way out of a safe. No…..no…..can't be……….morgue?

Katya's hands were trembling as she fished the .38 Special out of her desk drawer and flipped open her cell phone.

Speed dial 2. 30 seconds of ringing. "This is Sasha Pavlovich, I'm unavai…" She flipped the phone closed, tossed it on the desk, and slid out into the hallway, her heart thundering in her ears. Adrenaline settled her hands, and then the scratching became worse, shrieking across the metal almost like a bone saw, metal to bone.

"Oh my God," she whispered to herself as she pushed her body down the wall toward the morgue. It was fifteen feet down the hall from her office, and her body rebelled the entire way to the morgue door. The six-shot revolver was wobbling in her clenched fists like a child with weak wrists.

(deep breath-deep breath, dippy)

**(****BANG****………….****BANG****)**

"Oh motherfucker."

Katya jerked herself up to her feet and threw herself through the door.

There was a body….a _man_, a _living……living man….._crawling out of the **fucking cabinet. HEAD FIRST.**

The things that don't go through your mind when you're freaked out. "That ain't no coffee pot…."

Shock riddled Katya and like a damn fool she dropped the gun. It skittered across the floor and before she realized what was even happening, it was shoved up her nose and she was eyelevel with a pair of wicked looking canines and a grin.

"Clothes would be good," remarked the canines.


	3. Almost

Author's note: First, thank you to ALL of you who have commented and read! I'm so sorry I haven't gotten something up sooner, but I had a legitimately dead computer on my hands and they couldn't save the word documents! Second, I realized that I haven't made the obligatory Marvel-owns'em-not-me statement. At least not until now. :D

* * *

Coming awake in that damned body-bag…………well, he didn't reckon he could make fun of Jimmy anymore for being scared of shit. By the time the insulation and the doorframe gave way, he was in a deep fury, couldn't see straight, still couldn't quite breathe. Homo animus in entire. And then Miss Thang showed up…….

Oh it was precious! She'd even squeaked when she dropped the gun! Humanity never ceased to amaze him in its predictability. He sat now in her office, claws threaded around the pistol, wrapped in an aluminum heat wrap in absence of clothes. There was a mug of something black in front of him that he assumed was supposed to be coffee, but it was eating its way through the cup and making strategic plans for the desk. (Note the cell phone. Time: 08:27AM)

The parlor chair he was sitting in faced the desk, about two and a half feet back from it. She was standing on the other side, her back pressed as far into the corner as she could get it without knocking over the sideboard that held the coffee maker. The fear? Tangible. God, he could taste it. Beautiful.

Her throat allowed air to escape, but no words came out. She swallowed and tried again.

He had expected an inquiry. 'Who?' or 'What are you?' But she didn't head that route.

"I'm………you're a mutant."

He took a drag out of the caffeinated sludge. "Yes."

"A regenerate?"

"Yes."

She got bolder. "You _**ruined**__ my cabinet._"

"State the obvious much?" He chuckled.

She was easing out of the corner now, rearranging her sweater, tugging the hems as far earthward as they would go. One sleeve went up. She pulled it down again, reaching for another mug and pouring herself a cup of the sludge.

"Who are you?"

_Now she gets to it. _"Creed." He stated it plainly and drained the last of his…….coffee. "Who are you… " He paused, picked out the name on the diploma behind her, and drawled out "...Doctor Pavlovna?"

"Um…I have questions."

"I don't care. I do too. Start with how I got in a motherfuckin' morgue cabinet?"

"I……I don't know."

"Bring a skeleton in lately? Big bones, scratches on the forehead?"

"Yesterday afternoon, yes." The hesitant tone again. The implications were starting to sink in.

"And I was found where?"

He watched her eyes, her body. She was starting to smell a rat. Good instincts. She'd been out here in the sticks long enough for them to start kicking in again.

"I'm….I'm not really sure. I'd have to call the police and see………More coffee?"

_Uh-huh. You think you're scared now, Squeak?_

"You're lying, Doc."

"Nope." She took a sip of the coffee, holding it almost eye level as if she were trying to hide behind it. Technically, she _wasn't _lying. She didn't know the EXACT location of his body, but she knew that back corner of Willmore like the scars on her own ribs. The creature in her office didn't have to know that though.

_**DAMMIT SASHA CHECK YOUR PHONE.**_ It had been twenty-three minutes since she had placed the call.

Creed smiled, long and low like the predator he was. The canines made a grand re-appearance, and Katya took a gulp of the coffee.

Once when she was younger, she had gone on a trap-line run with her father. Halfway out, they found a timberwolf in one of the traps, hung by a back right paw. It had to have been in pain, but you couldn't tell it by the look in its eyes. They were almost merry, flat as a blade and savage. You couldn't see behind them.

He was on her faster than she had time to react, and the coffee mug dumped across her arm, stunning. The hand whipped around her throat, pinned her to the wall, the claws unsheathed and the bladed edge raked against her jugular.

"Listen up, Doc. Whoever you're expecting to call you is gonna find you painted all over this office if you don't give me what I'm looking for. Do you UNDERSTAND?" He hissed it, and just for effect, tongued the left canine.

The woman let go with a sob, wasting her air, and he leaned a little bit harder against her throat.

"UNDERSTAND ME?"

The nod was frantic and he dropped her to the floor.

And then she surprised him. He'd left the pistol on the parlor chair, and as soon as she hit the floor, the good doctor took a step and a half, snagged it with one long arm, wheeled, and emptied the damn thing into his chest!

He stood swaying as she tore out the door, keys in hand, the sudden pain sparking through his system but good. Coughing blood, he put one hand out and leaned on the desk corner. _Give it time, son. Give it time. You don't know what might'a been done to you. Give it time. _

Katya ran for the door, slapped it open, and threw the bolt. Her car sat twenty yards down the hill from the office, but the cold took her breath before she was even a quarter of the way there. She punched the access code into the panel on the door and let out a sob of relief as the locks clacked open. Throwing herself inside, she shoved the key home and turned it.

The engine chugged.

She tried again, and it howled at the attempt, but still didn't turn over.

Screaming, she yanked the key out, shoved it home, tried again. The engine tried too, but almost only counts in hand grenades and horse-shoes. It was practically keening in the attempt.

Creed's bare arm crashed through the driver's side window and hauled her out by her hair. Almost just didn't cut it.

His slap was open handed across the front of her face, and left her wondering why he hadn't just knocked her head off of her shoulders. Blood sprang from her nose and began freezing to her face.

"If you wouldn't be so damn DIFFICULT, lady, this wouldn't even be happening." His tone was mockingly reasonable, level even as he hauled her back to the office. The front door was almost hanging off of its hinges, but he made a semblance of pulling it to anyway. Katya was leaning against the wall, blood draining from her nose and eyes watering at the pain. Her entire face throbbed.

"Now. Think you can get me what I need?"

She nodded dumbly, riding the panic until it settled from the mad run to a steady canter. "I've got the recording I made when I examined you. It's back in the office in the filing cabinet."

He smirked, evil.

She turned her back on him and walked into her office.

Pride is a funny thing, he mused. Hers was as perverse as they came.

He cinched the heat wrap a little bit around his hips and followed her into the room.

She had her head in a drawer, digging.

"Kid, you're stalling." She looked up from the drawer, eyes watering, beginning to swell.

She handed him the tape and took a shrill breath. "Get out." It was snarled. A pretty good snarl too. Nice and layered.

"Excuse me?"

"Get out. You're a motherfuckin' regenerate. You'll be fine out there."

He rocked back on his heels for a moment, then smiled that long smile, turned, and walked out the door. Katya listened as the regenerate's barefoot steps slapped down the hall, heard the scrape of the door as he pulled it back, and then watched him out the window. He was strolling barefoot through the snow, head cocked slightly to the left, short hair already frosting from his rising breath. His shoulders were white as marble, cut like it too, and tinged blue by the morning light. His stride was lazy, longer than she would have thought from his bone structure. By the barometer, it was 22 below zero Farenheight.

Tears mixed with the hot blood on her face.


	4. Lantern Fuel

Author's Note: Ta-DAAA!!! :D The beauty of having so much snow that they cancel classes for three days straight is that you have all the time in the world to dwell in the realms of fandom! Have at it guys. I was initially SUPER leery of posting this because I don't know if it's actually as important as I thought it was at first……so I could use some honest (but TENDER!) feedback. (is down on hands and knees) Puh-leeeeeeeeze??

P. S. Ten points if anybody can tell me the significance of the Coleman lantern fuel! (think real world)

* * *

He headed west, paralleling 40 out of town and then striking into the timber. Damn it was brushier than it was when he once walked it. It needed a good _burn_. Of course, they didn't do that any more. Not as often as they ought to, anyway. Willmore was the logical place to start looking, but there were things he had to have first. Clothes. BOOTS, dammit. A tape deck. He looked down at the tape clenched in his hand. He wondered. Grand Cache was rapidly falling out of earshot, and the road headed out to Willmore was getting worse and worse, falling from good pavement to cracked and rutted gravel to snow covered track. Hell. He remembered when it was nothin' but a worn-in logging road.

Should he have put forth the effort to kill her? Maybe perhaps he should've. But that'd be more of an indicator, more of a big red 'x' that said "Victor wuz heer." Until he knew damn sure where he stood in this…….this…….he couldn't afford to be anything less than discreet.

The pinewoods he trod were old stomping grounds to him. He and Jimmy had timbered this country in the early 1920's. Timber beasts, they'd called the men that worked the lumber camps. 'And there weren't no greater beast than me,' he thought to himself. The timber company had been based out east of here, in Hinton, at the time. There'd been a Cree woman in Grand Cache, though……… The smirk came on. The stride swung looser.

He was up somewhere around 8 grand above sea level, and the cold made his body draw in on itself. Regenerate or not, anything below zero was gonna make your gonads crawl for cover and your skin shrink on its frame. His fingertips were tingling, the roots of his nails going blue, and he began to run. Regenerate or not, the cold could get to you. Towering evergreens whipped by him, black with the winter cold and leaning in the rising wind. He gave himself to the run, pushing like he hadn't pushed himself in years. Just to see if he could. Just to see if….just to see if he was all still in place.

If the damn thing hadn't backfired, he would have never seen it, and he was pissed at himself over that. The sound struck his left eardrum forcibly, bringing him out of the reverie and he swung his heavy predator head toward the snow-packed dirt road where the truck puttered along. It was a beat-all-to-hell 1989 Chevy Silverado, a 2500, maroon and silver…..and if he had to make a guess, he'd say it came out of the Scottsdale plant. He liked those trucks. They had tape decks.

* * *

Rodie was a used to be. Used to be bronc rider. Used to be scholarship recipient, rodeo scholarship mind ya. Used to be college student. Used to be goin' somewhere. Used to be.

What he was now was a piece of shit. A piece of shit in the same truck he'd bought with his winnings when he was 15. 21 years gone. The injury in school. The injuries after. The losing. The black mare that had pinned him to the inside of the chute and broke his back. He couldn't stand to look at a black horse any more.

The meth made it better. Made it worse too, when he was sober, but Rodie wasn't sober right now. He was just driving. He couldn't see his melted fingertips because they were bent over the wheel. He checked his teeth out of habit in the rearview and winked at the black grimace. "Lookin' good, boy." He drawled it out for the hell of it, playing on the phonemes of the word 'boy' for a good fifty yards before it fell out of his mind and he forgot what he'd been doing it for.

The truck backfired again and he jumped. Then there was a 'WHUMP' and when Rodie looked up for the windshield it had turned to a white shot mess of broke----_that's you, Rodie_---- and then it hurt, and then it was cold, and then his head felt splattered and the addict couldn't feel anything anymore. Except the cold.

Weeeel. He hadn't _meant_ to put the dude through the windshield. It just….you know, _happened._ Having gotten lazy in his old age, Creed didn't bother to finish the waste of skin. The addict was gonna pass in a few minutes anyway. Trauma to the neck and head like that was never kind. Go flying out of a truck windshield and crack the crown of your head against a tree? Sides. The truck had been going a good fifty miles an hour whenever he stopped it. He was _entitled_.

He stripped the clothes off. They were filthy and the combat boots were tight, but the jeans and the black sweatshirt fit…albeit snug, but they fit. The button-down was a lost cause and he pitched it into the bed of the truck. He turned to the cab. Like the clothes, it was filthy inside and out, smelled like vomit and Coleman lantern fuel. But there was a tape deck and the heater was still running. Ha. He could listen in luxury. He pulled the door closed, the addict twitched, and the tape began to play.

* * *

Sasha's fury went raw over the course of the next two days. He tore doors off hinges. He ripped heavy, sand-loaded punching bags through. He drank his weight in rum and anger. His SISTER. HIS sister. NOBODY did that to Katya. Losing Katya meant losing….well….almost everything.

Moira kept him level, those days, her solid little frame a reference point, her red hair a beacon. The savage in her refused to let him past reality and into that locked room where he kept his rage. The lady in her kept her proud and at his side. The packer in her kept a 2X4 within arms' reach if she needed it. God he loved her. She was too good.

He didn't know what he would have done if she had been out guiding a hunt.

Katya stayed with them up at the cabin while the work crews repaired her office. There were nights where she would wake up screaming. He'd hear her and fling himself out the bedroom door before he was full awake and run. Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit dammit. This was different than the usual nightmares. The usual, all she had to do was look to her brother and she was solid. These………these he sat and held her shrieking, flailing form until she could bring herself back down. He couldn't go in after her in these dreams.

And damn her, she always said she was sorry afterwards. Stupid sister. Moira watched these exchanges from the guest-room doorway, and when Katya came back to herself, she would have a hot toddy in hand, and a quiet smile. She kept her questions to herself, helped Katya with the packing around her nose, and kept compresses where they could get at them for her eyes.

Sasha had made himself wait until the bruises were fading to green before he questioned her. Timing bedamned. He wanted accuracy. Whoever this sunuvabitch was, the fucker was going to have to stop sometime. And when he did, Sash meant to be there. And he meant to be ready. Katya had described a biiiiiig feral, odds good that he wasn't on any kind of registry, leastways not up here, and incredibly strong. A cursory search of the data base turned up nothing.

What he did have, though, was a clear approximation of the kind of animal he was dealing with. Hell. Even watching him walk away, Katya had been making a stab at the length of his stride, the balance of his weight. Heavy to the heel, she said. Right handed but likely ambidextrous. Dark haired. Somewhere around 6'5". Intelligent.

Of course, none of this was termed in complete sentences, and Sasha breathed a sigh of relief at that. His sister had been battered, but she was still present. She had not been mentally unseated. She had not been ravaged. She was still here.

Moira had asked him once why he treated Katya so delicately. The closest he could come to the truth was to tell her that Katya was…….'sensitive.'

Sensitive. Sure, that worked. She was observant to a fault, could hear one flat instrument in an entire French horn section, could judge angles with near mathematical precision, and knew what to do with that information. When they were kids and were out visiting Irina Andreiovna, they used to play the 'find me' game. Sasha had a five minute head start from the house to the barn, and Katya had to locate him from where she stood on the front porch. If her first shouted guess was wrong, she got to take two steps off of the porch toward the barn. She didn't usually get any farther than that from the house before she called it right. They would switch, and there were times when Sasha walked all the way to the barn before he could find her. Hide and Seek on steroids, Eileen called it.

She had once told Sasha that it was as if she felt pressure from every angle. "Even the sound of your voice, Sasha! Or Papa's! Or Mama's! Sound IS pressure, and I FEEL it!"

He hadn't known what she was talking about at the time. It wasn't until a high school introduction to physics five years later that he made sense of what his sister was saying. So it WAS changes in air pressure. He had asked the teacher how loud sound had to be in order to feel it. The teacher, non-plussed, ignored him. Katya was already attending the University of Ottawa by that point. She'd outstripped their private school's ability to educate a good year before. Her grades were perfection.

She played softball with the same precision, same grueling attention to detail, same determination. As she got older, her finesse grew, her strength increased, and her killing accuracy got her kicked off of the varsity softball team after the fourth broken nose. Once, shame on the girl for getting in the way. Twice, shame on Katya for not being careful. Thrice, 'do it again and you aren't playing any longer.' Fourth time, she cracked the star third baseman on the opposing team on the back of the head with a homerun ball and the girl was knocked cold. Incidentally, her nose broke in the fall. It was as if Katya didn't understand what she'd done wrong. She'd hit her homeruns, get mad at herself for not pitching the right speed, and it only seemed logical that if the opportunity presented itself, that she should eliminate players on the opposite team.

Initially, she'd meant to be a doctor. People were important. And then Peter happened. She'd loved. She'd lost. She'd been on the road to alcoholism. She'd become broken. She couldn't hold her head up. These….things. These…..emotions. They were too much. She couldn't analyze them. She couldn't pin what went wrong on a single event. She couldn't work out the blame, couldn't split it. So she carried it, and when Sasha got a call somewhere around 3:30 one morning from the police to come and get his sister, she was about as low as she could have gotten. She had been filthy, prattling like a five year old.

"Sasha!" she'd squealed, her dark hair hanging in greasy ropes over her face. "Can you believe this?" Her giggling was manic, out of character. "I'm in TROUBLE!!!" She gloated over the fact. "All these years of being good and following the rules and yet here I be! Here I sit in a police office in the TANK!!!" She'd tilted her head back and howled with laughter, then looked up suddenly. "What? Don't you think it's funny too? You don't, do you Sasha?" And just as quickly, the sobbing began.

He was terrified, but he chose not to call either of his parents. He'd seen the inside of a mental hospital already, and he knew what it would do to Katya. They were 22.

So he took her home, exiled her to the shower, and let her sleep. When she came awake, the first thing she asked for was a ride to her university dorm. She packed her things, left a note with the RA, and proceeded to move into Sasha's bachelor pad off campus. He sputtered, but the terror of what was happening to his sister kept the protests at bay. It worked out. She came back to her self, she slowed down on the drinking, her grades maintained their pristine shine, and by the time they were 27, Sasha was a sergeant on the Ottawa police force and Katya had reached the qualifications for a medical examiner.

The way she explained it, breaking up with Peter had been something of a sensory overload. Pressure EVERYWHERE, in ways she didn't know how to manage, and it simply out-did her ability to cope. So she'd stopped. The flood gates on her dam of control had burst open. She didn't explain what that experience had done to her. She couldn't. There was too much data to communicate. Sasha left it alone, knowing.

Being in law enforcement, he knew where psychological counseling could help, but he also knew Katya. The truth would not be told, and she would present herself as a complete, whole being, with little to no unusual behavior. The psychologist would turn her loose, and that would be that. Hiding her perfectionisms was her specialty, and at a gut level, he didn't think treating her with anti-depressants or the like was going to help any either.

The fact of the matter was that his sister was probably a mutant. Maybe low-level, maybe latent, he had no way of knowing. She caught onto sensory data of any kind. She did it faster than any other human being Sasha had ever come into contact with, and faster than either of the two mutants in his acquaintance---one a Cree feral and the other with a sonic talent. She did it with an accuracy that defied reason. There was no possible use for half of the information she spouted off about, and yet she saw it. She heard it. She felt it. Smelled it. Tasted it. Knew it.

Grant you, that sounded like autism, but the DNA didn't add up. If either one of them was going to come up with it, it should have been Sasha. He knew that much. When you lived out this far, you sometimes had to be your own Mental Health examiner. No, what made him peg Katya for a mutant was the very control she maintained over herself. If she'd been autistic, she wouldn't have been able to pin it down and box it like she had. That control would not have been there, not to that extent. Nor would the sanity. Nor the chance that she could lose it. Again.


	5. The Simplest Explanation

In three weeks, she was herself again and driving Sasha out of his mind. Moira found the whole thing amusing and sat back behind her cup of chai and laughed as the twins scrapped back and forth in front of the shop. In a fit of raging boredom, Katya'd gone through his tools, 're-orgainizing'. Sasha was livid. Moira silently approved.

"Oh like you knew where your 3/16ths was anyway! I'm going HOME!"

"FINE! Gedoudda my house! Don't come back til you're civil!" He launched a ratchet strap at his sister, who dodged.

"Bet you'll misplace THAT before the winter's out TOO!"

He slapped the shop door closed and locked it behind him.

Moira met her at the door with another cup of chai. "I….I overheard."

The examiner cocked a brow and laughed quietly, relaxing her shoulders and letting her blue parka drop to the floor.

"Do you think you're ready to go home then?"

Katya weighed her words carefully, mulling the concept. "Yes. M'ready, I think."

"Good."

"It is," Katya replied. She kicked her boots off and took the mug of spiced tea (heavy on the cardamom, she thought) and a seat at the kitchen table across from her unofficial sister-in-law. She took a long pull on the smooth mixture and sighed. "Moira, I….. Not sure how to say this correctly, really."

The smaller woman held up her hand. "When people need help, people need help. You're family, cher. More importantly, you're Sasha's and mine."

Katya set her mug down. "The retribution is open. Should you ever need it."

Moira smiled quietly. "I know."

* * *

Katya pulled back up her own driveway later that afternoon, Moira's words hanging on her mind. She had been lucky the Honda even turned over---after her 'nesting' in Sasha's workshop, she'd half expected him to pull the plug on the thing and leave it to the winter's devices. The new drivers' side window was persnickety as well (glass particles in the gears making them grind, she imagined.)

Grande Prairie wasn't a happening place in the winter, and with her home on the very slender edge of town, she was about as isolated as she could get without being on a hill somewhere like Sasha's place. She liked it that way. She didn't get eyeballed by every redneck in the country on her morning runs, she didn't have company unless she wanted it, and she still had access to what she considered necessities. Not that Grande Prairie could handle her very well if she were to take an active part in the workings of the town……….

Duffel over her shoulder, she fished her keys out of the parka pocket with one gauntleted fist and threaded one into the lock. The wrong one, incidentally, and so she wound up biting off the glove in her teeth and sorting through them. She pinched it between a freezing thumb and forefinger, shoved it through, and the door sprang open.

The house was frigid, which was to be expected, and the first thing she turned on was the thermostat. The next was the computer, and the next was the light. Order didn't really concern her at this point. She was too busy to worry about whether or not she could see. She knew where things were all the time anyway. It wasn't exactly necessary to be capable of sight. There was a can of chicken noodle soup in the pantry—the ONLY can in the pantry—so she dumped it in a pot and got the stove turned on. The bread in her breadbox was a lovely shade of penicillin green, so she dropped the loaf, bag and all, outside her back door. The raccoon that lived under her rickety porch would thank her. He seemed a reasonable sort. If he had food, he didn't bother the trash. If he didn't have food, he knocked over her aluminum bins and strewed everything to the four points of the compass.

Next? Coffee. Yes, that was about right. Electricity seeped through the house, things began to whir and hum, the water pipes cried mutiny, but were not frozen, and things came back into order. Katya socked her cell phone onto the charger, thumped down in front of the computer and initiated dial-up. That was about all that she could get out here, and it seemed barely capable of a hobble.

Her own coffee maker was a very polite model, so the only thing that cued her in to the fact that she now had caffeine in her possession was the scent. Strong enough to kill a horse in Sasha's estimation, but really, really delectable. It occurred to her that she measured a lot of the happenings in her life by what Sasha said about them, but there was an excuse. She was too busy for practical thought. There was too much going on in her own mind to be bothered.

She realized she was still wearing one glove and that her parka had not made it onto the coat tree by the door. Excuse for coffee—she left the decrepit computer to its devices and snagged a cup while she picked up after herself. It was somewhat irritating to her that straight lines and bare floors were considered appropriate. It wasn't fair, and she'd said as much to her mother as a child. _She_ happened to know where every article of clothing she owned resided, and it didn't seem necessary to her that they be hanging in her closet. Eileen disagreed, and for a time, that was that.

Not that she couldn't be neat. Katya in the examining room was a person without wasted moves or unorganized thought. Katya anywhere else was very similar to a bright, distractable, muddied child who could not keep her mind on a single subject at a time. She had to be juggling.

Armed with her cup of joe, she returned to the computer, checked her overloaded e-mail (deleting everything except a note from her supervisor and Peter's mathematical results), and then began trolling. The wind rose outside. Her house seemed to lean in on itself in an attempt to keep warm.

She wasn't sure exactly what she was looking for. Not at first. But she started with historical data on regenerate mutants, cross referenced the name Creed, and came up with eight or nine message boards, fifteen recorded murders, and a 'carefully constructed profile' on the Church of Humanity's website. Out with the profile. Out with six of the message boards. She combed the murders, reading out loud as she did so.

" Lets see........southern US, eastern seaboard….. No. Don't need those. Wait. New York, maybe. Three dead there. Montreal. Montreal? In………2008, late '08. 'Police discovered body early Saturday morning, yada yada yada, could not understand who would do such a gruesome thing'….come on guys. It's the nature of the beast……..'hanging from a fire escape, disemboweled…..' okay. Gruesome. Sure. Buy that……"

And then the hair on her neck shot straight up.

"I don't guess you ever speak in complete sentences, do you?"

Katya remained facing the computer screen, frozen, likely in a biological response, but mostly weighing what might come from the savage at her back……….

"That guy in Montreal was fun. He was this bald, fat sunuvabitch that thought he was some kind of crazy." He approached, setting his cup of coffee down on the desk beside her own and leaning over her shoulder, speaking directly into her ear. "I gutted him, but he kept trying to crawl away. So I tied him to the bottom of that fire escape by his small intestines. Wasn't easy, it'd been raining that night so they didn't want to stay put."

Katya's lips were numbing, and she reached for her coffee mug. "Wha…I thought I told you to leave."

He stopped her outstretched arm, cuffing her wrist with his thumb and forefinger. "Na na, Squeak. I don't like hot coffee on my face. It's bad for the complexion."

She took a long breath, ice hardened her spine, and turned to look at him over her shoulder. "I emptied a full wheel of .38 slugs into your chest and yet here you stand. Would a sensible person waste effort and a good cup of coffee just to get you out of her proximity?"

He chuckled. "Would a sensible person waste six slugs on a regenerate?"

"I fucking hate rhetoric." She swallowed. "Get out of my house."

"No can do, lady. By the way, I brought the tape back."

"What, couldn't make sense of it?" Katya's entire being was riding fury, senseless as it might be. He had broken her nose. He had destroyed her office. He had invaded her home. She had dreamt in horror of his shit-eating grin for THREE WEEKS.

He snarled, low, rising to his feet and dragging her up with him. "It made good sense. But see, there's this problem." He shoved her backwards and she bounced off of the wall, sending a picture crashing to the floor. "YOU know. And I know. You aren't telling me everything."

He was expecting fear, craving it, really. She didn't give it to him.

Katya rose to her feet, willing her eyes to the deepest color of steel she could muster. "I don't cooperate with dumbfucks. Especially when they think that they can force me into something."

And remarkably, there was that THRICE-DAMNED turned back! She glided toward the kitchen, her back squared to his face, her body radiating heat and anger and sweat and a need for caffeine. No fear.

He was on her in a half-stride, slamming her into the wall, snarling in her face. "I've ripped people apart for less than that, you cunt. WHAT. DID. YOU. LEAVE. OUT!!"

Her face was stone. "Do you always salivate on your prey?"

He threw her against the door frame of the kitchen. It groaned. He wrestled with the overwhelming NEED to kill her and paint the room with her fluids.

She rose from the floor, unsteady, pain shooting through her spine and the back of her skull, and turned back to the kitchen, dull steel crawling through her body. "I need coffee, fucker. If that's a killing offense, then you're just going to have to finish the job after."

_Keep her alive. Keep her alive. You need what she knows. You need what she carries. Keep her alive. _

He reached out and snatched her by the braid. "Ask for it."

Her eyes died then, cold, flat. As devoid of life as the sky before a murdering blizzard. "I don't ask for favors in my own home."

He snapped his wrist down, slinging her feet out from under her and throwing her to the floor. Her head bounced against the scratched hardwood with a crack. Her breath hitched once, and she slipped into unconsciousness.

"NOW get your fuckin' coffee."

Two hours later, she started coming around. He had considered driving out to Willmore in the Chevy and making her start with the locale, but again, he was getting lazy in his old age. He'd have to carry her, and the barometer was reading somewhere around 16 below. She'd freeze to death before they got there.

He had checked her skull over, pressing carefully, checking for weaknesses in the structure, but unsurprisingly, he didn't find any. Her brain was just addled. He left her on the floor where she'd fallen, shed his coat, and sat down in front of the decrepit computer. He had his own research to do.

1) Marvelous. Colonel William H. Stryker died of heart attack, June 3, 2006. At least that's what the obit said. Don't ever believe the papers.

2) Jimmy? Really? You're teaching SCHOOL?

3) Politics couldn't be at a better point for somebody to get back into the mercenary business.

He kept an eye on the woman, listened as her heart-rate leveled out. Paid attention as her temperature rose and fell. It seemed like a regular thing with her, every five minutes it was up or down somewhere around two degrees. Weird, but he figured it was just part of the whole deal.

Latents smelled funny, like something shiny packed away in old mothballs. He imagined it was the meanest trick nature could play, to give somebody something that they had to carry, but couldn't reach out and take a hold with. It had been all over that office. It had been all over that tape. It had been all over everything around her, that…that shit like the smoke smell you couldn't wash off after a bad fire.

She came to, not moving. He smelt the spike of saline and realized she was crying. Heh. That would have to do.

"Dial-up? Really?" He chuckled.

She sat up slowly, hand at the back of her head. "I think I'm going to be sick."

"You can get your coffee if you want. Tylenol, maybe? I can't have you TOO out of commission."

She looked up at him, eyes still flat gray, but tears clung to the lower lid, refusing to spill. "What. The. Hell. Do you want from me?" She sniffed, brought her free hand up to wipe the tears and the snot back. "I don't get it."

"Tell me what you didn't say on the tape."

"What?" She shook her head, doing her best to clear the cobwebs, her head wrapped in a sharp ache. "Why? It's…it's impressions. It's just thoughts…..it's not…it's not….."

He took a long, long look at her, and rose from the chair. She immediately began scrambling backward out of reflex. She didn't get far, running her back up against the wall and trembling.

He crouched in front of her, the smell of his unwashed clothes, his heavy breath tinged with coffee overwhelming her. Her urge to vomit returned with a vengeance and she let out a sour breath.

"You can't be serious."

"What do you mean? That's all they are, really! I can't possibly be right about them all, they're just unsupported guesses, I swear that's all they are…."

"You mean to tell me you don't… How in the hell could you not?"

"Not what?"

His patience snapped. "You're a fucking mutant, dumbshit."

"What?"

CHRIST did she lack the ability of sentient thought or what?

"Some kind of latent, but it's coming off you in waves, and my guess is that you probably can pick up shit that even I can't, and I'm a fuckin' FERAL. You can't TELL me you haven't noticed….."

Katya's head was spinning right off it's vertebrae. Mutant? _MU-tant? _ Mutant. How? Why? This didn't fit the statistics! Her father didn't show any tendencies, Eileen didn't show any tendencies, Irina Andreiovna didn't………

She'd never told anyone. She'd been too afraid of where it could go. It didn't make sense to her that she could feel everything. It didn't make sense to her that she knew her world from the ground to the sky, from molecule shift to molecule shift. She couldn't possibly…….

The simplest explanation is always the truest.

Start from where you are.

Those were her rules.

She hit the switch in her brain, let the data in, let it swamp her mind, rode the tide of it until she found the piece of flotsam she was looking for. The references to Creed began, interestingly enough, with something broken—her nose, in point of fact. But from there, it ran back, slowly, going over the acrid tang she smelt when she handled the bleached out bones, to the remains of it that bit at the back of her throat now, looking at him.

"Can you help me stand up, Mr. Creed?"

He silently offered her a paw, claws sheathed. She took his hand in both of hers as he pulled her to his feet. She turned it over, and he was frighteningly still as she took a rattling breath.

"You think something's wrong with you. Right?"

"Squeak states the obvious….."

"You think it has to do with………well, I can tell you this. You've….I think you've been exposed to some kind of acid."

He grunted. "Yeah. I got thrown in a barrel in Calgary. Sealed in." She opened her mouth and he snarled. Her eyes, fighting back out of the flat steel gray, snapped wide, and she swallowed a mouthful of air.

"Okay. Think maybe your regen got thrown off by that. Kinda likely. I don't know how much; we'd have to run tests."

He grunted.

She ventured, cautiously, "NOW can I have my coffee?"


	6. Facts

Two days told him more than he wanted to know about his 'condition', as the two of them had come to call it. Katya told her brother that she'd run into a light pole while she was walking through town as an explanation for the bruising, and the fact that Sasha believed her spoke _reams_ about his hostess.

"So now what?" He nursed a cup of coffee- HE'D made it that morning instead of the medical examiner, so it was actually halfway drinkable.

She eyed him over the rim of her own cup of joe. "You tell me."

They were silent, she in observation, he in thought. Katya was out of her chair before the microwave beeped, checking on the frozen dinner spinning inside.

"Come on, Creed. Based on the information it shouldn't be that hard to figure out…" She smirked like a cat at cream and slammed the door on the microwave once more. Second time she'd been off on the timing.

He leaned back and raised a brow. "Enlighten me."

She thumped down into her broken kitchen chair again and took another pull of coffee. "Well, observation. Experiments, shit like that. I mean, we know that it still works." She looked pointedly at his chest. "What we don't know is whether it's in stasis or whether it's changing. Now, the quickest way to figure that out would be to take a look at your DNA, but I ain't got the equipment, and frankly," she took yet another sip, "I'm not inclined to send a sample off for somebody that ruined my freezer cabinet."

He snorted.

She hopped up again, popping open the door on the microwave with a bang, whipping the microwave lasagna out and settling two pieces on a plate for Creed and three for herself.

"How come you get more?"

"Because I want more. If I don't finish it, you can have the rest. Strike you fair?"

"Bitch."

"Yessir. More coffee?"

It'd been like that the entire way. Once she'd decided that he wasn't going to pummel her out of existence, she had simply opened her mouth. It was like getting stranded on an island with a marooner that hadn't had company in "Oh AGES!"

Hard to follow her train of thought, too. He almost needed a flow chart, and there had been a couple of times that he'd actually handed her a piece of paper and a pen and demanded one. Thank WHOEVER was responsible for existence that there were very few people like the Squeak.

Katya's thoughts on her mutation (if that's what it was, because she still had her doubts) were thus. "If I've got it, then why not use it?" So she'd begun cataloguing EVERYTHING in her path. The size, shape, and possibly the scent of the raccoon who lived out back-he'd taken the moldy loaf of bread and she hadn't seen him since and suspected that it had something to do with the big feral-went into her brain, along with the strange sounds her foundation was beginning to make whenever she slammed the front door…..and she knew now why she had to slam it, because the frame was unevenly constructed, off by about two and a quarter centimeters….

Her need for massive amounts of caffeine suddenly made sense.

Sasha suspected something. She knew, by the acrid tang on the air whenever she talked to him at the office. But as long as she didn't say anything out of the way, and as long as he was still mad at her over his mess of a garage, she was good to go. Moira knew she was keeping someone at her house because she'd dropped by to hand off some things Katya'd forgotten up at their place and had called to ask when she started wearing a size 13 boot.

"SSH!" Katya'd said, and Moira laughed and left it at that.

Victor would kill them both if he knew that they were aware of his presence.

Ergo, Katya kept her mouth shut. And her brain rattled. But she still wasn't sure what to do with the big feral chowing down on microwave lasagna at her kitchen table. And she didn't know, either, what he was going to do with her. He would have killed her if he didn't have something in mind. And because her imagination was over-active, and because her awareness had become-she wasn't sure if 'had become' was the correct term- so much more acute, she had a guess or five at what might be in store for her.

…

He woke up in a screaming rage and the first person to cross his mind was his brother. Logan didn't know how he knew the man was his brother. He just knew. All the way down into his bones. He threw off the covers and threw open the window, leaning out into the frigid New York winter air and taking in a huge breath. By increments, his adamantium claws sheathed themselves. Chill bumps raised across his chest and arms, not so much from the cold but from the vividness of the experience.

He kinda felt sorry for the truck though. Those Scottsdale Silverados had been good trucks. He'd watched a man, wrapped in what looked like a friggin' aluminum blanket stand the thing on its end and pitch the driver through the windshield into a tree. Then he watched the big mutant…couldn't be anything other than a mutant, it was his BROTHER after all…settle into the cab of the ruined truck and watch as the driver froze to death on the side of the road.

The thought made him sick. He hated having a conscience. Didn't do him any good. Just got him all wound up over things he couldn't change. And never once did his conscience try to convince him to do the smart thing and let well enough alone. Oh no. No he had to be in love with Jean Grey. He had to big-brother the only mutant at the Academy that could kill him without even trying. He had to be the biggest, baddest sumbitch ever to darken the door here and agonize over the dreams and the flashes he kept having. Things he'd done. Things he'd seen. Things that Logan Now would have slaughtered Logan Then for doing.

_"Logan?"_

He flinched at the still-unfamiliar nudge of Xavier's consciousness. Did the old fool never sleep?

"_Not when your screaming rattles the halls, I don't. I'm in the observatory. Would you care to join me?"_

Nope. I'm going back to bed. And I'm going to sleep the rest of the night. End of story.

_"Suit yourself." _

Logan did.


	7. Age and Wisdom

A/N: It's a long one! (for me at least) I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get these things up, but I've had opportunity to write lately, so I've been doing so. I'm still under an inspiration streak, so hopefully you'll get another update soon after this one.

And also-THANK you all, whether you're a lurker or a bonafide reviewer. Glad you're enjoying. More to come. :D

"I'm leaving for a couple of weeks, Sash."

"You're what?"

"I'm taking a vacation."

There was a pause on the other line, and she could almost see the quirk between his brows. "But….but you never take vacation. You've got enough back time saved up that you could literally retire a year early if you wanted to!"

"Well, I'm not going to retire until I'm sixty. And I need a break."

Sasha's mind whirred, and Katya winced at the crackle his tenseness made over the phone line. Literally an imperceptible :crack:crack:crack: as he turned this over in his head. She changed the subject.

"Found your 3/16th's socket yet?"

"Don't change the subject. Katya….are you okay?"

"Yup."

"Liar. Where's the socket?"

"I'll never tell." She snickered. "Sasha. I checked out once. ONCE."

"Over a lot less than this."

"_Sasha._ How many years ago was that?"

"Eight. But it doesn't matter! Katya, you're…."

"In search of a healthy form of release. Such as Broadway. Or art museums. Or a truly decent LIBRARY, the likes of which I have not graced with my presence since we left Ottawa!"

"Katya…."

"I'm LEAVING! Mu-WA-hahaha!"

Sasha sighed and shook his head. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Yup!" She chirped it, like she used to do whenever she was feeling particularly clever, and Sasha knew that she wasn't going to tell him what was afoot no matter how he pried. "You know where the socket is, by the way. It'll come to you." With a clunk, her phone fell back to the receiver and he cussed her for stealing the last word.

Sasha paced out to the garage and, despite himself, started rummaging through the tool-boxes looking for the 3/16ths socket. Moira wasn't due back for another two weeks…..bow season. She'd hauled the mules and Casper out that morning, somewhere around 4 or 5. He wasn't sure, and she hadn't put a time down on the note she'd left on the kitchen table.

_Beloved_, it read:

_There ought to be enough in the fridge and the freezers to keep you from starving, and if you find that there isn't, go get your sister and take her out to dinner. Be good to yourself. I love you, Sasha, _

And she'd signed it Mo. With a little heart after it. Mushiness. He treasured her for it.

The phone in the shop rang suddenly, and he jumped. Picked it up.

"Hey."

"Again?"

He heard his sister grin. "Do you have the key to Irina Andreiovna's? I can't find mine."

_You know where it is, ya harlot. It'll come to you. _"Uh-HUH. Key for the socket?"

"Nope." He listened to her rummage around. "Never mind. Just found it. Thankya!"

"Ssssnot," he replied articulately, and hung up the phone.

Katya looked up from the drawer she'd been rummaging in as the big feral paced into her bedroom. "Out," she pointed toward the door.

"I'm not a fuckin' dog!"

"No, you're more feline. Get out of my room."

Creed smirked and leaned on the door frame. "You've got something on your brain. I can smell it…."

"Yeah?" She pocketed the key and started picking through her laundry, sorting darks from lights.

"Smells like an electrical current."

"Electricity doesn't have a scent. Ozone does, and electricity creates it when it moves through the atmosphere, but electricity doesn't smell." It made sounds though. She had known that since she was a child.

"We're taking a trip?" He changed the subject, figuring that she'd never actually get around to telling him anything until it occurred to her to do so.

"I'm taking one. You might be bored by it, though, I'm afraid."

"Trip or fact finding mission?"

"Both." She intended to get roaring drunk at least once in the next two weeks, but that had nothing to do with starting the journey at her grandmother's house. "Are you coming or no?

Wasn't he supposed to be in control of the situation? It had crossed Creed's mind that he ought to keep her more intimidated. And he would. But getting in her way now would be like putting a choke collar on a tracking blood hound. He'd set forth a challenge, and she was chasing it. Add in a little self discovery and the glaring fact that she was probably going to consider the whole thing an adventure and he had controlled the situation as effectively as if he'd held her over the mouth of a volcano. Age and wisdom, age and wisdom.

"Yeah. I'll be along." He smirked, pushed off of the door frame to go, and then stopped cold. A chill clung to his shoulders and he frowned, puzzlement knitting his brows.

Katya sat up very straight on the floor, her eyes narrowed. "Creed, you need to sit down."

"What the fuck for?"

The pain that shot up his back a fifth of a second later answered his question. He jerked back, hard, lost his balance and slapped to the maple planks. He could do nothing but ride out the shocks of agony as they rolled over him, gritting his teeth to keep from biting through his tongue and wishing to hell that he could still pass out. But he couldn't, and when the shocks finally stilled, the tremors came. His knuckles rapped a savage percussion against the hardwood floor, rattling like the rest of his bones and trying to crawl out of his skin. His claws snapped out, scattering a thinner beat on top of the thunder of the rest of his body. He tasted blood, knew that that his fangs had extended. His spine rolled up and off the floor, flinging him at a direct forty-five degree angle from the floor before dropping him on his occipital lobe. As quickly as it began, then it was over. He curled on his side, wheezing.

Somewhere in the midst of it all, he felt a grip on his shoulder, a warmth, and then as the shakes eased, a blanket, and a pair of gray eyes wide with concern.

It was a while before either one of them spoke. Katya just sat next to him on the floor, crossing her long legs and scooting over next to his back, keeping a hand on his shoulder. His stomach growled and slowly, carefully, he sat up.

"New experience?" She cocked a brow.

"Squeak states the obvious."

"Food?"

"Yeah, that'd be good."

Katya untangled her legs and without thinking, offered her hand to the feral. He snorted and turned away.

"Suit yourself," she drawled, and headed for the freezer, flicking on the kitchen lights as she went.

The blood in his mouth had seeped back into his system and his stomach was now growling furiously. Needed food. Fast. Otherwise the healing factor would start taking nutrients out of his whacked system and that, sports fans, wouldn't be good. He put a big hand on the wall, pushed to his feet.

Who the fuck did she think she was, offering to help him stand? Huh? Christ.

Christ he was in trouble.

He made his way to the kitchen one step at a time. The world stopped spinning at the edges. He sat down in her GOOD kitchen chair and leaned on his elbows at the table.

Per usual, her back was to him. The frying pan sizzled as she turned bacon, her free hand fiddling with the dials on the oven. "You need something now?"

"Right now."

"There's a container of roast beef in the fridge."

He pushed to his feet, kicked open the fridge door. Gripped the container to keep his right hand from shaking and popped the lid off. Two pounds of rare roast beef disappeared.

She turned around and leaned against the stove, hands oddly still. "Creed."

He sat back down in the good chair.

"This changes things."

He inclined his head, gritting his teeth to keep back the involuntary shudder.

"Is…is there a place where we can go? A place that specializes in treating anomalies? "

FUCK NO. Not there. Not the school house with its ivied walls and stinking mercy. He frowned, pretending to think. "I don't think so."

"Okay. So that goes on the itinerary too."

He raised a brow as she pulled the bacon from the skillet and flopped three eggs into the grease. "Huh?"

"First, you're lying. Your body temps spike whenever you're lying. Second, I'm a researcher. I'll find that place whether you tell me where it's at or not because I have questions too. So..it's necessary. The legwork."

He inhaled the plate of bacon in front of him and practically swallowed the eggs whole. His stomach stopped shrieking, the shakes eased. She had padded down the hall and now she was cutting through the kitchen with an armful of sorted laundry.

"Squeak, it's midnight."

"Uh-huh?"

"Why are you still up?"

"Because I've got a lot on my mind and I just had a massive feral mutant go through a system melt-down on my hall floor, which raises more questions." She stuffed the last of the load into the washer and started the cycle.

And then she rotated on her heel and stared at him. "Creed, you're _bleeding._"

He lunged to his feet so quickly that she didn't have time to step back out of reach and caught a set of claws across the side of her face. The chair clattered on the linoleum and broke, Katya fell to the floor and Creed fell with her, both hands tangled around her throat. Katya pounded her fists against the side of his head, hoping, praying, for oxygen, and she wasn't getting it. Still her mind catalogued: the gray film on Creed's eyes denoted a blood rage, though what from she couldn't ascertain. His reaction to her statement likely stemmed from….hurt pride? That was her best bet. But the answer to why this was happening -her vision was beginning to swim from lack of air and she was losing strength and coordination- didn't save her life. So she choked out a word.

Creed stopped instantaneously.

Well that was easy.

"What?" His eyes were clearing. She could see to the bottom of them again.

"Please…"

He lunged back to his feet and put about ten feet between himself and the medical examiner. "What? Please what?"

"Hand me a cup of coffee?"

He stared, dumbfounded.

She coughed and probed at the scrapes on her face.

And then the feral threw his heavy skull back and laughed. Hard. Until the tears ran down his face and his sides hurt. It chilled her.

Katya ratcheted to her feet and got herself that cup of coffee. She put creamer in it, and sugar. And vanilla. She thanked whoever was listening that she was still alive while she drank it. Blood dripped down the back of Creed's neck and he ignored it.

She didn't. "Look. If you're bleeding like this..."

"It's from a hatchet."

She stopped speaking and waited. "During WWII. Russia. I got lax and this big ox of a peasant stands up and sinks it in my skull. I rip him apart, as was normal, and then lose my balance and fall in a ditch. Jimmy was sitting across the way on a burnt out tank. Just laughing his ass off." He put a hand up, pulled it back. "Sitting there with that damn handle hangin' out of my head." He chuckled, wryly.

She was quiet for a while. "Huh," she finally remarked. "So wonder whether your healing factor'll take care of it again….."

Katya's face wasn't dripping blood, as she'd anticipated. It just stung enough to be a nuisance. "You wanna know something I'm annoyed at?"

"No."

"I'm annoyed that you keep going after my face. You break my nose, you thump my head, you claw my face….. Mr. Creed, I like my brain. I also like my face. I don't like it when things like that change. So if you're gonna hit me, dammit…."

"Take a body shot?"

"YEAH."

He snickered for hours over that, after she went to bed.

The next morning, he rose from the couch at 8AM and the two of them began vacationing.


	8. Forbidden Things

8AM was as good a time to start as any, Katya reasoned as she threw her duffel in the back of her little electric car and scooted the seat on the passenger side back. Creed's knees were going to bang the dash anyways, but it was the least she could do. He was half asleep on the couch when she rolled him off the side of it and handed him a cup of coffee. He was COMPLETELY asleep when she pulled up in front of her grandmother's farm-house on the western side of Grande Cache.

In the house of Irina Andreiovna, there were two stories, both literally and figuratively. The first story held the kitchen, front room, and Irina's bedroom, plus the entrance to the cellar below the pantry. It was a trap-door. Katya and Sasha had thrown bean-bags and pillows down into the cellar one Christmas, propped the doors open, and jumped the 15 feet down, skipping the ladder entirely. There was also a half-bath, but it was unimportant. The first _story, _the one Katya didn't know very well at all, was the chronicle of Irina's husband Arkady, his death, and Irina's mad dash to North America. She had never known what drew her grandmother to Alberta, but there it was.

The second story held a study, Pavlov's old bedroom, a guest room, and a bathroom. There was a big claw-foot tub in that bathroom that had always been one of Katya's favorite things about her grandmother's house. The other was the study. Books created a soul. The study was her first taste of what a library should be, and was still the measuring stick she held all other libraries to. The second _story_ was the one she knew. The one where Pavlov and his mysterious mother existed in a small town, learned, loved, and grew.

What she needed was the key to the first _story_, which, most likely, would be found in the study. Through the front door, across the foyer, up the stairs, first right. It was a small room, floor to ceiling bookshelves, a desk with a decrepit Apple computer still setting like an ancient beast, and two chairs. The carpet underneath the desk was not near so plush under her feet as Katya remembered, and it made her wonder just how much of her childhood she had actually glossed over.

She ran her hands along the frame of the bookshelves, starting on the north wall and waited until the buzz in her head became more resonant. There wasn't a single visual cue to suggest it, but one good rap and the framework along the side of the bookshelf popped loose and allowed her to spin the entire shelf around. This was one of Pavlov's additions, but Katya hadn't found it until she was fifteen. She and Sasha had been hashing over a paper he had due as soon as they got through Spring Break, and it had descended into an argument. Naturally, she threw something (in this case, a glass ashtray). She missed her brother, the ashtray clocked the facing, and voila. There it was.

It became a hiding place—forbidden things like the last of Irina's vodka, a couple of joints, et cetera- but always, forever and anon, it was where Irina's journals lived. There were eight of them. Each hardbound, but the similarities ended there. Katya trailed her fingers over them for a moment before plucking them one by one from the inner shelf and dropping them in her bag. Irina's history was here. So was Katya's.

Logan's largest concern, of late, was fifteen years old. And it could SCREAM like unto nobody's business. It also had red hair and was gonna be cute in a few years. Right now, though…

"NO. BLOCK." He caught Kitty's forearms and flung the howling brat up against the wall across the room.

"What the hell was that?" She was gasping as she dragged herself back up on her feet and brushed herself off.

"BLOCK, Kitty. If you can't grasp that one, kid, then you're just SOL."

She groused. "I shouldn't HAVE to! I should be FAST enough…"

"Honey…." He laughed. "You're never fast enough. And just cause you can walk through a wall doesn't mean you can get past what's on the other side. Kid, there's practical things in life. **LEARN'em."**

He left the lesson at that for the day. The kid was going to have bruises enough. He didn't need her to break something.

Eating was in order. He had his rare-'Mooing', he requested when Bobby asked him how he wanted his steak-and washed it down with a beer. Things seemed right. They had cooked on the grill one last time for the year in defiance of the falling snow, and the kids were happy. He'd caught Rogue and the ice cube playing footsies under the table a couple of times that night, and the girl was sparkling. Kitty was limping, but still inhaling her food. There was a little girl who could do a lot of cool shit with lights, so the downstairs kitchen was glowing like the inside of a copper kettle, and winter, whatever it had in mind for them, was here.

Now if he could just shake it off.

The brother in his mind. The chewing at the back of his spine that there was somebody out there…a whole PERSON that carried the answers he so desperately wanted. He couldn't go there. It was too much to hope.

That was before he woke up screaming again. Before Cyclops pounded down his door and made the fool mistake of shaking him out of sleep. Before Jean's eyes flew wide and frightened at the sight of his honest rage and the blood on Scott's face.

The professor spoke to him about it the next morning.

"I'm fuckin—"

"No, Logan," Xavier held up a quiet palm. "No, you are not fine."

There was an awkward silence. The professor's gaze did not waver, but Logan found himself staring at the walls, the ceiling, out the window at Kitty hanging one-armed out of a tree, at ANYTHING but the unquenchable stare of Charles Xavier.

Finally-"Yeah."

"So you didn't find anything at Alkali Lake?"

He puzzled. He'd found nothing. An abandoned complex and a scent that should have killed him it was so familiar. The Professor knew this. "What are you sayin'?"

"I'm saying that you should go north, my friend."

"You mean you're scared I'm gonna hurt somebody?"

"I mean that the reason you could harm someone is because you don't have enough understanding of your situation. You've been dreaming more frequently. More…specifically."

He paused, staring at the man outright. "You have no business in my head, Xavier. NONE while I'm asleep."

"I wasn't in your head, my friend. I was merely observing the patterns in your vitals."

He snarled, felt it rising quick and faster than he meant for it to. The Professor cocked a brow and raised the fingers on his right hand slightly.

Logan cooled. Slowly. He couldn't hear his heart for the pounding in his head.

And then he took out. Threw things in a duffel, swiped the keys to Scott's bike off the top of the dresser in their room. Canada bound.


	9. Curiosity and The Cat

Creed's knees were tense, and he was only half awake when she crawled back into the car. Her bag thumped into the back seat, and she backed down the drive and onto the two-lane.

"Whuzzat?"

"In the bag?" She squirmed around in her seat, still uncomfortable.

"Yeah."

"Um….can you speak or read Russian?"

He cracked one eye slightly and slid it toward the driver's side of the car. "You ask the DAMNEDEST questions."

"Well, I had to ask." She picked up her thermos and took a long swig of coffee. He was silent.

For the next two hours, that was how it went. They got on Rt. 40 and followed it east into Hinton, where it was necessary for Katya to refill on coffee and for Creed to eat. No music was played. No small talk. More hours went by. And then, about fifteen miles on the east side of Edmonton, it got to him.

"WHY do you want to know if I can speak Russian?"

She snickered. It hadn't occurred to him, she was certain, that she wasn't the only one that had a particular scent when she was thinking. And the way his _brain _behaved…..what a lab rat he would make.

"Because it'll save me time. We aren't out here just for you, you know."

He glared, snaked one arm back into her bag, and tugged the whole thing up into his lap.

"The green one's the oldest."

He cracked the journal open, raised a brow at the date, and then, despite himself, began to read out loud.

o00000000ooooooooo00000oooo

Creed came up for air about fifty pages in, somewhat concerned with Katya's level of alertness. She'd dropped the tires off the burm four or five times in the last twenty minutes, and her face….he'd seen the woman in pain, he'd seen the woman frustrated, he'd seen the woman angry. He'd never seen her drop so far inside herself that her own features were beginning to follow suit. She was hunkered over the wheel, head tilted down. Her eyes were narrowed in response to the midday sun. She'd begun chewing her lower lip about eight pages in and now she nearly had the whole thing in her mouth. Chunks of her dark hair had escaped the braid and hung to the side or across her eyes, depending on which way she moved.

"Squeak."

"Hmmm." There was a pause. "Why'd you stop reading?"

"Cause that's the sixth time you've dropped off the side of the road in the last twenty minutes. It's buggin' me."

"Okay." She pulled over to the side of the road, whipped the keys from the ignition, and handed them to Creed. "You drive then. I'll read."

Which was fine by him. His throat was starting to get raw.

So she read. Clear into Saskatchewan. Didn't come up for air. Didn't come out for food or drink. Didn't blink when he came within an ace of nicking a bull elk with the car. She completely tranced out of existence, and it was a marvel to him how her scent changed as she did it. First, it was the ozone, strong enough to make him gag. Then a copper, like blood but not. It wasn't organic enough to be blood. Then, in an odd twist, about five hours into the process it went completely citrus, like a cross between a lime and an orange. And then, slowly, the orange scent outweighed the lime and mixed with a cinnamon that was…familiar. A very quiet, creamy, cinnamony smell that should have killed him it was so familiar. So sweet. And until 2AM the next morning, it stayed that way.

She looked up from the fifth journal, her little booklamp burning dim. "Creed, I'm hungry." Her stomach growled in agreement. He couldn't help but chuckle.

"What, no coffee?"

"That's after."

"There's an all night truck-stop a couple of kilometers ahead."

"That'll do."

The waitress was a wizened old bird that was expecting a pair of creepy crawlies, and was a little surprised when she only got a mutant and a drained academic. She took their orders, raised a brow at Katya's long list of food, and then strolled off. Nothing surprised her any more. She'd seen it all here, and besides. Who needed TV when you had a truck stop?

Katya leaned back into the red pleather and concentrated on keeping her eyes open.

"So." Creed's boredom was beginning to crank. There had been no stimulus in that car save the driving of it and paying attention to Katya. "Facts found?"

"Yeah." She stifled a yawn.

He waited. The waitress brought them coffee, which Katya drained on the spot and laughed with the beak-faced woman as she filled the cup again.

He waited some more. And then he couldn't wait any longer. "SO?"

"Um. I….I honestly don't know where to start on it. Because if I'm reading between the lines right, then….then there's a really logical explanation for the reason I am the way I am. And the reason my brother is the way my brother is."

Creed snorted. "Genetics?"

"Nope. We're experiments."

"Loooogical."

She took another pull on her coffee. "More so than you would think. My grandfather was Russian military. I don't know what branch. I don't know what he did. But the way Irina talks, Arkady was selected, about a year after they were married, to become part of some kind of research team. She doesn't say what he was doing with that team, and to be honest, knowing what I know about the Soviet Union, Arkady probably didn't know either. But he started getting sick. Started coming home with aches and pains that he couldn't explain. And then rages. Sudden stomach complaints. Oh, BEAUTIFUL!"

Her stomach growled as the waitress plopped a five-stack of pancakes in front of the girl, and Katya tended to more imminent business. Creed followed suit, and they ate neck and neck for the next fifteen minutes. When Katya came back to the world of the living, she had inhaled five pancakes, three eggs sunny side up, eight links of sausage, half of Creed's bacon, a tall glass of orange juice, and three more cups of coffee. She sat back with a lady-like burp and smiled happily at Creed.

"MUCH better. Not that you care."

He couldn't help but agree. She smelled more like herself. "Anyways?"

"Huh? Oh!" She kept it short. And he very pointedly made no comment about Wade Wilson. Arms races. Gotta love'em. She paid for the meal, and the waitress gave him a dirty look because he didn't . Cunt.

0oooooooo000000000ooooo0000

Back in the car, she yawned. "I'm sleepy."

"Well what do you want me to do about it?"

"Motel?"

He'd stayed at the one across the street. It hadn't been pleasant. But they went there anyways. And she passed out on the bed without even taking her clothes off. He couldn't help but laugh at the fact. It was as if she didn't know who she was in the company of. Or that she had no idea who was actually controlling the situation. She was so….casual. Calm. That deep cinnamon still clung around the edges of her body, and he had a suspicion that it wasn't going to go away. He sat down on the bed across from her and studied.

Wow. So…..what did you refer to someone who was the product of genetic experimentation? He couldn't call her a mutant any more. She still wasn't sure what had happened to Arkady, but apparently, the man had died and her grandmother had run screeching out of Russia a few hours after. It sounded like, reading between the lines of her explanation, that the KGB was running some kind of project a hell of a lot like Stryker's Weapon X. Made Creed wonder where the man had gotten the idea in the first place. And then it went bad. They killed their subject. And the woman that he'd married had the poor judgment to get pregnant by the man. So when Irina ran, she wasn't just running away with her unborn child. She was running away with millions of rubles' worth of research. Whether she knew that or not remained yet to be seen. HE wasn't going to read any farther into the journals. Not tonight anyways.

He stretched out, kicked his boots off. Katya stirred in her sleep, drawing one leg up underneath herself, still face down. Both her arms were stretched forward as far as they could go, as if she'd been trying to catch herself before she fell into sleep. Her face was turned to the side, and, as usual, away from him. She was all dark lines and draping, except for the pale patch of skin he could see at the base of her braid. He wasn't sure what was keeping him from touching her. Taking her right there without even half a thought. Everything in his existence belonged to him. He was a demi-god set to walk the earth as he pleased. But he'd never had anyone make a point of turning their back on him on a regular basis. Even Stryker knew better than that. And it had been a long long time since anyone had shown any kind of concern for his well being-misguided or otherwise. It was weird. Uncomfortable, even. It made him want to beat the living hell out of her because it was stupid, what she was doing, but….. But what. He didn't know. And whether he wanted to admit it or not, he was going to find out or die trying.


	10. Dreamy

A/N: Oh I am so cruel. :P Also, a thanks to everyone who's been reading this tale-been up a year and three days now!

0oooooooo00000000ooooo0000

Creed's grip on her hair loosened suddenly, and he leaned in, sniffing, drinking in her scent like nectar.

"Christ you smell good when you're afraid."

She looked him in the eye, shaking though she was.

"Can't turn your back on me now, can you?"

"I told you a long time ago, Creed. I hate rhetoric."

"And I hate you." The sudden crush of his mouth sandwiched her head against the brick wall at her back-rock and a hard place-. She fought for breath, trying to shove off of the wall, but it really wasn't any use.

He came up for air.

"Creed, stop."

"Why?"

"Because…"

He ran a thumb across her pulse and sniggered as it jumped and she shuddered.

"How long's it been, Squeak?"

She began shaking her head violently as his hands dropped down her neck, shoulders, down her ribs-bump, bump, bump-but there was no biting off the gasp as he ran fingertips along her abdomen.

"So that's a yes?"

` "She put a hand on either side of his head and stared him in the face. "Creed, just shut up."

What happened next was not so much an intercourse as it was devouring. She hooked one long leg up over his hip, grinding into his erection though their jeans and raking her hands down his back.

He ate her mouth, neck, shoulders, his claws extending, slicing sleeves, and necklines as she pressed up against him-get close enough that you don't get hurt-. He hissed into her collarbone at the change in pressure and when his adrenaline spike, she took advantage. His system was sparking, and so she shoved off the wall in that single moment, with her legs around his hips, they were totally equal. He weak enou9gh to understand, she strong enough to measure. They froze.

Then he sunk his teeth into her neck and she arched her chest into his.

"Jeans. Off." Her own system was starting to become riddled with data-the planks of muscle corded up his spine as she clung to his back for balance.

He sniggered again, soaking in the orange and cinnamon and the grip of her legs around him before they crashed back into the brick. He pinned her with his weight, holding her on tiptoe while he trailed a clawed hand down and she hissed in her own turn….

0oooooooo000000000ooooo0000

He lunged to his feet awake, PISSED that he couldn't've finished up with what he was after. Then he turned and the hair on his neck stood. Katya wasn't in her bed.


	11. That Moment in Time

….and then he heard the shower kick on in the bathroom and his body loosened a notch. Wasn't sure what brought the tenseness on, but it was going now. He flopped back onto his bed and listened to the water slapping against the shower walls and Squeak humming, of all things, the U.S. Air Force theme. Every now and again he'd catch a snatch of words and then it would be back to the sluice of the water and the humming. Oddly enough, it sounded like she was using the frequency of the shower to create an amplifier for the tune.

"….blue yonder…..into the sky!"

He dropped a hand below his belt and laid the pressure on hard, still thinking about that wild-ass dream and wondering where the hell it had come from. Not that she wasn't pretty. Not that she didn't have great legs. Not that she was odder than any woman he'd ever encountered. Not that he'd ever catch a whiff of cinnamon oil without thinking of her again. She just…for whatever reason, he hadn't equated The Squeak and sex before. Also unusual.

With a thud, the shower nozzle shut off, and he listened as she dropped a bottle of shampoo on her foot and began to swear floridly. Then the bathroom door slapped open and she padded out, attempting quiet. He rolled over on his side and closed one eye, noting the time. It was 4AM. She was in a tank-top and flannel bottoms. A flop onto her bed, and she was out like a light. Silence. The only time she could be quiet was when she was unconscious or focused.

They took 16 all the way through, and the next day made Churchbridge. She made it through the 5th journal and had started on the 6th. The farther along they went, the thicker the journals became, and so to the reading.

She regurgitated the information at 2AM, over a full breakfast. Again. He listened, again.

0oooooooo000000000ooooo0000

_Her grandmother was terrified of what could happen to her son. She kept waiting. She knew. Of course she knew. Did Pavlov? Did her mother? What was to come of it all? What bearing did this have on her brother? Huh? What was going to HAPPEN when she called his dumb ass and told him that they needed genetic profiling? How was she going to explain that to Moira? Were they going to think that she'd gone crazy? _

_ And Russia. Fuck. RUSSIA. In a mutant arms race? Was it OVER? Were there any other 'mutants' like her? But wait. Wait wait wait. Creed, what do you know? Creed, have you ever run into anybody like me? Creed are you even LISTENING to me?_

0oooooooo0000000ooooo0000

He laughed. "Naw, Squeak, I don't think so."

"You don't think you're listening to me?"

"No, I don't think I've ever met anybody like you before."

"But…..come on. If the Russians were doing it, so was North America. And you're…how old? Have you run across anything like this project? Seen it? Heard of it?" She held her breath like a kid in hope.

"No."

She paused over her eggs. "You're lying."

"Yeah. I'm not talkin' about it."

"Fine, fucker." She went back to her eggs. "Did I mention that I hate impasses more than I hate rhetoric?"

He flinched at the word 'rhetoric' and choked on his ham, washed it down with a shot of too-hot coffee.

And then that scent came rolling in through the door. Then the swagger and the leather jacket and that _foreign arcane_ stench of adamantium and then-

"Could I get a cup'a coffee, bub?"


	12. A Night in Churchbridge

Logan had seen the little electric car when he came in, and something about it made him laugh. There's nothing that sticks out like a battery-powered vehicle parked between a great big Ram 3500 and a '67 Impala. Such consciousness. He was still snickering as he pushed through the door. It had been cold, and the welcome lights of the café glared across his eyes.

"Could I get a cup'a coffee, bub?"

The squawk of a chair hard on the floor drew his eye to the center of the café and he couldn't help but check her out. Looooong black hair and gray eyes, animated, exhausted, and my damn didn't she smell like a million bucks. Cinnamon and oranges. She was on her way to the bathroom, shaking her head at the broad shoulders at the table, laughing to herself. As she brushed past him, he heard her say something about 'rhetoric' and was still laughing as she slapped the bathroom door open.

His eyes were laughing as he turned back to the kid at the counter. "Somethin', huh?"

The boy's face paled. "Yeah. Um….yeah." He pushed a ceramic cup at the feral and scuttled back to the kitchen so fast he seemed to dematerialize. The feral tugged at his coat collar and took a sip. Good stuff. REAL good stuff for a truckstop.

And then scents again. The *snap* like a bullet overhead in the back of his mind. His back tightened up, and one ageless feral turned on his heel to face the smirk looking at him over those same broad shoulders. He didn't know the man. But Christ…

"Take a load off, brother?" There was a twang in the air. "I hear you're teaching school these days, Jimmy."

Logan was vibrating, shaking, his claws beginning to itch at the knuckles, and the air he was breathing froze before it hit his lungs.

"Who…..?"

"Well, they said you had that problem. Are you gonna sit down or not?"

His legs trembled as he walked across and took the seat on the other side of the table. He looked into the older feral's face.

"I know you," he choked.

Even the muttonchops managed to be sarcastic on this guy. "You're as bad as the Squeak over yonder. Always gotta state the obvious."

Logan flared. "Listen bub—"

And then the cinnamon girl started cussing and the big feral whipped around. "What the fuck's the matter with you?" He demanded.

"That's…..! You fuckin' piece of trash you didn't TELL ME?"

"What?"

"Useless COCKSUCKER got NOT the faintest CLUE ….."

"WHAT?"

"That's your BROTHER?"

Logan flinched at the feral's casual response. "Yep."

"Creed, he could be the _key_!" Then she went ramrod straight and pale. "And you better hit the floor. Like now."

The younger feral's body went icy as he watched the bigger man go gray and drop into a fetal position. And then a seizure. The cinnamon girl hanging on to him, trying to keep him from moving as much as she could—couldn't do it.

"HELP me!" She was hanging on for all she was worth while the older feral thrashed her all over the café floor, and mad by the smell of her.

He didn't know what to do, so he just got a grip on either one of her wrists and they hung on to the flailing, bleeding feral. Slowly, slowly, he began to still. More slowly, his body ceased quivering. Still more slowly, he became able to look around.

The poor kid behind the counter was terrified and would later, when he explained the damage to the manager, omit the fact that he'd pissed himself behind the counter as he watched. "Should…." He started to stutter, but Katya snapped a look up at him.

"No, lil chicken. Ambulance isn't gonna help what he's got."

She looked up at Logan, one hand resting on…Creed's….shoulder. "You're his brother."

"I…darlin' I don't know."

"You are. I can smell it."

He lunged to his feet. "I can't do this."

"What? Can't do amnesia? I can't smell that but I can hear it, you know. That's how I know when this one—she gestured to Creed—is gonna go on me. Would you believe me if I told you you're close to getting it to turn loose?"

"Lady, you don't make a whole lot of sense."

"Help me get him up," she barked, and slipped Creed's massive, limp arm over her shoulder. The older feral groaned. She gritted her teeth and tried to lift, but couldn't quite get him on his feet and Logan slipped beneath the other arm. The kid behind the counter was staring at them, quaking. Katya dropped the bi g man in a chair. "Hey. Could I get another cup of coffee, please?"

The boy, whose name was Maynard, poured a cup of coffee and passed it to her across the counter. "Cream and sugar?" he whispered.

"Thank you, but no."

She downed it, and he refilled the cup. Logan watched, half impressed. Creed began to chuckle.

"Brother, you should see what she makes at HOME. This is weak shit compared to the sludge she drinks."

"Yeah well if it weren't for you I wouldn't need all this caffeine, now would I? Mr. Creed, I fear you're going to shorten my life by about thirty years."

0oooooooo00000000ooooo0000

Logan's head was spinning at a frightening pace. Things were coming to him. Flashes of the timber ground north of Hinton and west into British Columbia, of a pair of spiked boots and that familiar, familiar smirk setting in the chair. He wasn't getting it all, but the pieces were coming in longer strips than they had before. And they weren't wispy. Shit.

Shit.

_Shit._

0oooooooo00000000ooooo0000

The injury that showed up this time was one from waaaaay back when. A long gash strolled down his ribcage, and Katya insisted on watching the thing knit itself back together.

"It'll give me more to work with."

Creed winced, and remembered how he'd gotten that gash. Logan stood off, and the older feral observed his brother's face, waiting for it to flicker back into the _real _Jimmy. The fool who had jumped a trench and a line of razor wire and took the finest sons of Germany to school with a hatchet and an empty rifle. He'd been so proud of his brother that day. Watched the idiot stomp back across the lines slick with rain and mud and scarlet with blood and every inch the half-man he was. He'd done good that day.

"So tell me again why he's our magic key?"

Katya looked up from the half-closed rib-cage and waved absently at Maynard for more coffee.

"Cause his regen works. And y'all are blood brothers, right?"

Creed rolled his eyes. Katya barreled on

"So if I can get a sense of how his works, I'll be able to work out a treatment plan whenever we get to that mutant hospital you still won't tell me about."

Logan's brow quirked. "You mean…"

Creed frisbeed a saucer at his brother. "Keep your precious professor to yourself, asshole."

And then Katya turned and her smile was purely magnetic. Competed with the moon for the tide. Had to.

"Mr. Creed says you teach school, Buster Brown. Teach at a school for mutants."

"Uh…"

Blue lights and wailing sirens shook the three of them out of their reverie long enough for them to realize that they'd all forgotten about Maynard before the cops came crashing through the door.

Creed lunged to his feet, savage and whole again. The first idiot through the door had nothing but a megaphone in his fist.

"STEP INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM AND GET YOUR HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!"

Creed tongued a canine and shoved his hands down into his jean pockets. "And if I don't feel like it?"

Katya had her hands up, but with a little badge in them, and it gave the man in blue pause long enough for her to get out "I'm Dr. Katya Pavlovna I'm the medical examiner out of Grand Prairie and I'm on state business!"

Megaphone dropped it and came up with the gun when Logan's claws ripped through his knuckles. Katya's hair stood on end when she realized what she was standing in the middle of. Creed was grinning. "Squeak, honey, you better get low."

"Back door?" Logan asked.

"Reckon."

"There's an exit next to the bathrooms, too."

"Gentlmen, stand DOWN." Megaphone apparently didn't need one, and he didn't need that brain on his shoulders either, because the man was spoiling for a fight and cock-sure. Katya could smell it on him—that twist of ammonia—and he had reinforcements.

"I SAID, I'm on STATE BUSINESS!" Katya was shrill now, afraid of what was happening and unable, completely unable, to keep up with what was going on around her. Too much data. She began to shake. "Officer, YOU NEED to stand DOWN, sir!"

"Dr. Pavlovna, you need to….."

And then she'd _simply_ had enough. Slipping out from between the brothers, she pitched her badge and ID at one blue brother and put her foot in the loud fool's solar plexus. His breath went out with a 'wuuf!' and she caught him on the way down with a grip at his throat. The little man started to flail against the counter, losing purchase on the floor as she picked him up off the ground and planted him halfway across it. Hard.

She was cold when she began to speak.

"Sir, you will listen as that young man over there reads off my identification and then you are going to put yourself and your little friends back in your cruisers and leave. Mr. Creed suffers from a rare condition involving seizures and when you're a feral mutant, well…there's only so much that can be done to control his reactions when he's Grand Mal. Mr. Logan and I did what we could to contain the situation and apparently frightened the young man who called you. Sir, that identification?"

The young man rattled it off, a tremble at the back of his throat. Katya put a hand out and he placed them in it.

She stood the little cop up and released his throat. "Now walk out that door."

He eyeballed her, massaging his throat.

"DON'T—" she hissed as he started to speak.

He stumbled out the door, waving for three young officers behind him to follow.

Katya was still ramrod straight as the cruisers eased out of the parking lot.

Silence fell.

Creed's eyebrows were up. "So. I don't guess we're spending the night in Churchill tonight?"

She glared and stalked out the door.

Logan's eyes were wide, shaking at the close call.

Creed sniggered. " 'member me now, Jimmy?"

"You sunuvabitch," Logan bit out.


	13. Cats and The Strings They Play With

A/N: An apology to my Canadian readers-for about 12 hours before I caught my mistake, Chapter 12 was entitled 'A Night in Churchill'. It was supposed to be Churchbridge. :D Cheers to the rest of you, and thank you for reading!

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Katya didn't need sleep for another four hours. By then, they'd made Portage La Prairie. Logan's bike was out of gas, Creed was looking pale, and the three of them were starting to tatter. Pulling up at a motel, Katya handed Logan a wad of bills and told him to go get a couple of rooms.

"I'm not gettin' any closer to that fucker than I have to."

She rolled her eyes and hooked him with that glare again. "Then I'll do it. Go get the rooms."

They might as well have crawled into their rooms. Katya eased Creed down on the single bed closest to the door and without another thought, left a trail of clothes between that bed and the shower. Creed lifted his head and watched her go, took note of the long scars on her ribcage, and dropped off to sleep.

_Shit, _his unconscious remarked. _Boy, you're gonna let that walk?_

"Shut up," he mumbled.

She woke him up getting out of the shower and going through her clothes. The underwear was utilitarian, and the brassiere was too, kinda. Except it was hot pink. He hadn't expected that, and he hadn't expected the Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt, either. She dropped the towel in the midst of her discarded clothes, flopped sideways onto her bed, rolled over so she could face the door, and then realized that he was awake.

"Mr. Creed-" Her voice was too tired to carry venom. Just a straight annoyance.

He cocked a brow and motioned her toward him.

Her eyes widened and she squeaked "Whuh?"

"You're already shivering. Come on."

"You're a piece of shit," she remarked, and then paused. And then Creed grinned when she took the half step between the two beds, yanked the covers back, and burrowed down next to him. He dropped an arm over her waist and snugged her in close.

"That was pretty impressive, Squeak."

She tilted her face up. "Huh?"

"With the cop."

"You were gonna kill'em, Creed." She was quiet. Forthright.

"Yeah."

"You realize I'm gonna get a call from my brother about this, right?" The breath she huffed out clung to his neck and he almost shuddered.

"I know."

She stretched. He gritted his teeth. This was the part where she could get bloody if he wasn't careful. "Squeak?"

There was no answer, and he took a long breath. "Squeak?"

No response. Dead to the world. He chuckled and ran one big hand through her hair until he fell asleep.

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Logan didn't sleep. The upside of that was that he didn't dream, didn't kill the furniture. The downside was that he was going to have to spend the next twenty hours on the road with nothing to keep him alert but coffee. He cussed.

His mind ran like a rat on a wheel. And honestly, he half expected The Professor to pop in all smug-like. But he didn't. And he almost wished that he would, just so he could sort it out. And that right there was just disconcerting.

He had a room three down from the older feral and Cinnamon Girl, so he wasn't sure when they were going to get up. He'd been out of bed and had already scarfed down as many English muffins as he could get away with out of the free complimentary breakfast by the time his brother trudged out.

"Where's the girl?"

"Still dead to the world." He laughed, this rugged kind of chuckle that sounded like something that it really wasn't.

Logan raised a brow. "Come on, now. She's not your woman."

Creed rocked back on his heels and a half-smile came out. "Well. You still got it." That brother thing.

"Yeah."

Creed poured himself some orange juice and drained it.

"So tell me about these seizures?"

Creed looked at him. One of those pointed 'you know better than to ask' kind of looks that brothers have in their repertoire.

"Listen. She said I could be of some help. And sides that. You smell funny."

The torque on his brother's heavy brows made him laugh. "I _smell _ funny?"

"Yeah. Like somethin' isn't working like it oughta. And anyways, Cinnamon Girl in there said that it had something to do with your regen, didn't she?"

"Cinnamon girl….you picked up on that too? And she didn't say anything about regen!" Creed drank another glass of orange juice and scraped all of the bacon out onto his plate.

"She did so. While she was watching your ribs grow back together. And what's with you opening up like that?"

Creed ate bacon.

Logan paced.

Creed ate pancakes.

Logan got online and e-mailed The Professor, asking if there was a way he could get in contact with Hank McCoy, that he'd explain when he got closer to New York.

And finally, finally, she made her appearance.

Katya did not look like a doctor this morning. She looked almost ten years younger than she was, from the electric blue Chuck T's to the t-shirt and jeans. Her hair was down. Cinnamon girl no more. She was back to the orange-lime. Creed's brow went up at that, but he kept eating.

She plopped down in front of him. "So Sasha called."

He looked up, and Logan leaned in. "Who's Sasha?"

"My bi-my twin brother. Two minutes older than me. Also a cop."

"Ah."

"He hear about yesterday night?"

"Yup."

"Cuss you?"

"Yup.

"Demand to know who I was?"

"Yup."

"You tell him?"

She paused. "Um…kinda."

Creed abandoned the pancakes. "What'd you tell him?" His voice took on a sharp edge, and Katya bristled.

"That he didn't want to know."

"He listen?"

She shrugged and angled an eyebrow at Logan. "Does that one listen when you tell him to stay out of it? I threw him a bone about Irina Andreiovna, and I told him I'd call him when I got more word."

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The little electric car had never handled much over 80 kph very consistently, but it was starting to get the idea. Logan was maybe two hundred yards ahead, and while there was a miss in the bike's engine, Katya figured that it would hold out until they got where they were going.

"Creed, could you start on the blue one?" Katya asked.

He shook his head and fished the journal out of the bag, flipping through the pages. "Hey. The handwriting's different in here about halfway through."

"What?" She turned her head slightly, tucking a piece behind her ear the better to see him out of the corner of her eye. "You mean different like shakier?"

"Huh-uh. A different handwriting altogether."

"Really…" Lime rose to the fore in her scent, and he wondered where her brain was going. "Read?"

"Uh…okay. Here."

'_April 30__th__, 1968. Pavlov has gone to Vietnam, and my world shall never be the same. My son. He does his duty, and may well die for it.' _

"That's it. That entire first page is blank 'cept for that."

"Well keep reading!" She almost hissed it, and the lime practically sent sparks up his nostrils.

He turned the heavy yellow page and continued. Katya's mind slipped the chain and ran with the words. Creed read for three hours without a spoken word from the driver. And then she had to hit the bathroom and they stopped at an out of the way truckstop. She stalked inside while Creed got out of the little car and stretched. Logan hadn't stopped. Ten minutes later, she stalked back outside with a king size pack of Reeses and three bottles of Pepsi. Creed's eyebrows went up as she plopped down on the top of the trunk and ate the whole pack in a go.

"Well?"

"Wewh whuh?"

"You gonna tell me?"

She swallowed and her answer was muted. "My father never served in the military."

"Yeah?"

"He couldn't have and finished law school when he did. And he doesn't act military."

"Huh."

She erupted. "Creed this is a PROBLEM!"

He picked his teeth.

"And he never would have met my mother if he went to Vietnam because they were _married_ in '69 after he met her in law school!"

"Uh-huh."

She wanted to kick him. "Come on! F-in COMMISERATE here!"

"Why? You just found out that you've been living under a bad assumption. So?"

She snarled and opened a Pepsi bottle, chugging it.

"I'm a scientist. My world, or what I thought was my world, just went to hell because of that bad assumption. Dad couldn't have been in the military. He wouldn't be a lawyer. But he is. And he did. And to hear her talk, Irina thought he served with distinction. It's a _problem._"

"Look. You're not the first person ever to have the rug jerked out from underneath'em."

Katya was silent, wishing for her brother. "I'm going to have to call Sasha tonight."

Creed shrugged. "Are we gonna get going?"

"Sure. Why not." She crawled into the driver's seat, he followed suit, and they were gone.

Creed added Pavlov Arkadievich and that man's involvement in the Vietnam conflict to his list of things not to mention. He had faith in Squeak's research capabilities. But there are some things a latent mutant can't handle by herself. The Weapon X program was such a thing. She wasn't ready for it. _Yet. _


	14. Crash

Logan realized he'd lost them maybe fifteen minutes after they'd stopped, so he wheeled Scott's bike around and went back. Katya was perched on the trunk of her battered little car with a mouthful of Reeses Cups and his brother was thinking about Russia. He could tell, because Creed kept running his hand over the back of his head where that damn hatchet had sunk in.

He snickered, then paused. He turned that new memory over in his mind, relived it. He paused again, realizing that he hadn't been carrying that memory three days ago. He wasn't sure, but he didn't think that amnesia recovery worked thataway. He'd have to ask Cinnamon Girl.

Cinnamon Girl was fussy. As Logan strolled inside the gas station, bought a cheap cigar and a can of Red Bull, he watched her. Emphatic waving of arms, open mouth, intense eyes. His brother as unresponsive as the Spynx. Her brows dropping low over her face. The bottle of Pepsi there and gone. The two of them crawling into the car. Logan finished his cigar before he started the bike and followed them, about five minutes behind. Didn't matter much. Catching up was not an issue. The bike was a BMW. And Scott used time and money very well. He followed, maybe a mile and a half behind as they took 100 South toward the United States border.

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It had not occurred to Katya, apparently, that she could have flown to New York. New York had been her destination all along, of course. She wasn't sure why. But there you were. It didn't really matter. What Creed had just read was haunting her, and she couldn't think about it any longer. She remembered well what had happened to her the last time she'd gone past that point. The fear in her brother's eyes. The shrieking in her own mind as she turned the machinery loose as it willed.

She drove. Creed didn't move at all in his sleep unless he was dreaming, and he wasn't right now. There is an alchemy that took place on the road when you were holding at a consistent speed. Katya had heard of truckers making runs from Winnipeg to Calgary in fifteen hours holding at 50 kph. The math didn't work. She had looked cross-eyed at her college roommate at that statement, and then did the math again. Still didn't work. But now that she had been on the road like this—moving without fail—she understood. Two days ago she might as well have been in British Columbia, and yet here she was, maybe 45 minutes out from the US Border. Calm wrapped her. She could feel the off-sounding engine of the bike behind her—knew that Logan wasn't far off. She slowed at an exit

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Creed wasn't asleep. He was too busy listening to her spar with the thoughts in her mind and fighting off the tenseness in his back. She didn't realize it, but she had been speaking out loud, working through the problems at a rapid pace. It made him laugh, because from what he was hearing, he was about to start getting asked really hard to avoid questions and he had nothing before him but to decide whether or not he would answer. He felt the car slow down, and braced his feet against the floorboard.

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Logan saw it all coming a mile and a half away.

A flame-red semi slammed across the four-way they were crossing and shoved the little electric car across the intersection like a piece of paper and over the burm. It rolled three times, dropped off a bank.

The Wolverine hit the gas, horror broiling his vein. The car'd been smacked on the driver's side. The trucker had parked, was out of the vehicle….and then Logan slowed.

Something wasn't right. Something smelled wrong. And familiar. And by the time he caught on, and by the time his hair stood on end and he hit the brakes, the damage was already done. The side of the freight trailer peeled back, the ravaged car got hooked to a winch, and William Stryker smiled at him from the passenger seat.

Logan had maybe fifteen seconds before he had to take cover. He didn't have a gun. He didn't have artillery. He was fucked. They were all fucked.


	15. A World of Hurt

A/N: Folks, this is graphic. If you get sick at the thought of blood, you don't want to be reading this. Sorry!

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The freight trailer was dark, stunned. Strong senses or not, if you go from daylight to total darkness, your eyes aren't ready for it. You go blind for about thirty seconds. You are limited to your hearing , touch, and sense of smell. That's all you've got.

Creed smelled blood, heard shallow breathing, and the rattling of an M4. Then the diesel roared to life and they were moving. He was paralyzed. He held his breath, let his anger snarl to life, and then the sight came back on. He turned to his left, and Squeak…..

Fuck. She was looking at him, or at least had her head turned toward him at an odd angle. He reached out, jaw clenched, and put his hand to the back of her head. It came away bloody, but she moaned. Unconscious, breathing. Better unconscious than conscious. She was going to wake up in a world of hurt. He reached across her and unbuckled her seat-belt. Things were mashed in the door. Muscle smells different than blood, and so does bone. He smelled both.

Death smells musty, with an acrid tang at the back of your throat. He smelled that too.

Katya moved, jerking her head directly to the right.

"Squeak?"

She twitched, moaned, inarticulate.

"Squeak."

Her eyes opened and she gasped, gulped, choking. He hooked a couple fingers in her mouth and scooped out most of the blood.

"Breathe, dammit."

She looked at him. She was here. She was completely silent, but she was _present_. Feeling it all.

"You can hear me?"

She nodded, one quick jerk of the head.

"Then listen. You're stuck in the door, and I'm gonna pull you out. It's going to hurt."

She gulped and he took his seat-belt off. It didn't make any difference if she was ready or not. "Stay loose. That's your best chance."

_For __**what**__? _

He yanked. Katya screamed. It was one of very few times in his memory that he could not take pleasure in that sound. She came away and across the seat in a slick wet rip. Her breath came ragged, she chilled, gulped, blood filled her mouth again. Shock wasn't a possibility, it was a reality. Her sodden body was cold, waxen where she wasn't bleeding. He lined bones up with a ruthless precision, strapped loose muscle tissue down to those crooked bones and swore that time would stop before he let her die. Three tourniquets.

By the time he was finished, his shirt was in tatters. He had lifted her out of the car on his side of the vehicle and curled up with her on the scalding hood. The still-cooling engine wasn't enough, but it was the best he could do. Between that and his own body-heat, he tried. He'd been covered in this much blood before, but never from one person. Her pulse was faint. She was leaving. She was fucking leaving.

Creed hung on like the damned grim reaper that he was.

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Stryker watched the crane picking up his big ass container off of the semi flatbed and chuckled to himself. They hooked the container to a chain inside the carrier and hauled it inside the plane.

"Magnificent…."

"Sir?" His assistant, ever alert.

"Once we're in the air, I need that container opened."

"Cut into the top, sir?"

"That should do the job."

He waited. He listened. Creed was oddly silent. The woman was most certainly dead, and the fact that his former favorite was racing across Canada with a piece of ass in—of all things—an electric car, disconcerted him. He'd meant to kill Victor, of course. That had been the plan all along. But he couldn't, exactly. Less regenerate ability than his brother or not, the very best he'd been able to do was put him in stasis. And here he was. Again! Delight. Fuck that was a gay word. But that's what he was feeling. Sheer, utter, demented delight at the prospect.

Twenty minutes later, they were in the air. The scream of a saw slicing through the container roof sounded eerie as hell bouncing around the hull of the cargo bay. The sergeant at the saw cut the hole about 20" by 30", large enough to comfortably pull a body through. There was a clang, a rattle as the piece fell through and bounced off the roof of the car. The sergeant rocked back on his heels and traded the saw for a spotlight, dropping his head and shoulders through the hole. "Sir, they're on the hood of the car."

And then his dumb ass died. Creed leapt from the hood to catch the sergeant by his head, disemboweling him on the rough edge of the hole he'd cut and then literally twisting the man's head from his shoulders. No arterial gush—the sergeant hadn't been wound up enough when he died.

Stryker stood up, mildly shocked. "Mr. Creed, I can see you're in working order!"

Creed stared up at him, fury in his eyes. "You want to keep this woman alive, Colonel."

"Excuse me?"

"Don't fuck with me. Keep her alive. She's Arkadievich's daughter."

"Well," Stryker drawled, a cloying tone to his voice. "That's another thing entirely then."


	16. Catalyst

A/N: (bites nails) I know they're short, but it's just coming to me thataway. It's also getting a little on the AU side, but I'm trying my hardest to stay true to the Sabretooth and his brother. If anybody has any suggestions, or even _flames _(!) I'm all ears. As always, thank you for reading. :D _Red Molly _

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She wasn't here. Scentless. That disturbed Creed more than anything else about her current state of affairs. They'd moved her out of the container. Stryker stayed in the cockpit with the pilot, saving his energy for when they touched down. He suspected that he'd have a fight on his hands whenever they hit the ground, and he was right. But he had Arkadievich's daughter. He had the opportunity to look at a living, breathing example of how manipulated genetic material passed from generation to generation and the manner in which it expressed itself. He was going to keep her alive; of COURSE he was going to keep her alive. And he was going to get in touch with Pavlov just as soon as he was able. Oh MY the opportunity. The Colonel shivered and yanked his jacket closer. Patience. Patience here. He had sense to leave Creed alone. Age breeds wisdom; both Creed and Stryker were at a point where it was simpler to use less effort in the order of living.

Katya was not in such a position. She was trying with all of her might to breathe, to keep existing. Creed sat by her on the floor of the plane, tweaking the IV when she needed it, fussing over the dressings, speaking in a low rumble meant for her ears.

"I know you can hear me, Katya, so listen. Nobody here's got a right to die but me. You've got…." He stopped, realizing just how ridiculous and sappy he was about to get. "Fine. Go ahead and die. Leave your brother. I found that damn 3/16ths socket in the glove box of your car. I'll ship it to him. I will. And what about the journals? Bitch, they were all on the right side of the car. They're still there." She was silent, waxen. Creed gritted his teeth. "Come ON, Squeak. _Come ON_."

She moved her right hand, raised two fingers. Her eyelids twitched, and the right eye opened, slowly. Creed bit back a gasp, bit back harder on the impulse to reach out and touch her cheek. She curled her wrist experimentally, and then started to lift her arm. He placed a paw over her wrist and laid it back down. "Huh-uh. Re-gen you ain't."

She jerked her head a little, her lips beginning to move. Creed cocked his head. "What?"

She repeated the motion, and he took the hint. Leaning down, face to face with her, he waited.

Katya went into a violent fit of coughing and he jerked back, wiping spit off of his face. When he got over the reflex disgust, he looked back and damn her if her right eye wasn't bright with orneriness. She couldn't smile but she was doing her best and her entire body was shivering with laughter that couldn't make it past her chest cavity and broken ribs.

"Fuck that, you piece'a'shit!"

Her body still trembled, but the wicked light went out of her eyes and was replaced with somberness. She motioned again, and he relented, turning his ear directly over her mouth.

It was a rasp, not Katya's voice that escaped the crooked mouth.

"You're kind." Never, as always, what he expected. He pulled back, looked her in the face and took the seriousness in. He leaned back down. "I'm cold, Mr. Creed. And we need to talk. Do you know where we're going?"

He stretched out on her good side and cradled her. He told her everything he knew and most of what he half-knew. What he knew was in the journals. His suspicions on the arms race. The existence of Wade Wilson and people like him. What made Katya special. What was going to happen to her. The odds on what would happen to him. They were in a position that they couldn't get out of. Logan was loose, as far as they could tell. Katya…her world was never going to be the same after this.

"I wonder if my sense will get stronger now. You know, like how if you go deaf or blind the rest of your senses pick up momentum. I'm-hell, Creed, we're dropping altitude. Did you know we were dropping altitude? A week ago I wouldn't have noticed that, much less been able to say something about it."

"Your morphine must be kickin' in, fast as your talking."

"I do feel better."

He grunted and tucked her head under his chin.

"And you smell like sandalwood. And juniper."

He shook his head. How damn DUMB could this broad be sometimes?

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There was a fever in Logan's veins. He pulled the bike over at the next truck stop, called the Academy, and forked everything over to Jean and Ororo. They'd take it and run. His guts churned. He bit through a cigar. He took a pull from the flask of Crown in his ruck. And then he picked up the phone again and called someone he had not remembered for fifteen years and asked some very specific questions about Sasha Arkady Pavlovich.


	17. Strings That Play Back

A/N: Meet the man whose secrets started it all. :D Thank you guys so much for reading!

Also: Law enforcement, as a general rule, is not allowed to carry .44 magnums because they are considered to fall under the cruel and unusual category. There's a reason that weapon is here.

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Pavlov kicked back at his desk. The man was tired—harried even. He'd spent too much time behind this damn desk and he needed to get out. He had a younger partner that was about to get himself deeper into a case than any good defense lawyer should ever get. Three other firms were courting his clients. It irked Pavlov that, after so much effort placed, someone could undo it all with a twist of the word or a wave of the hand. How well he understood that dynamic.

The lawyer planted his expensive Italian-leather loafers on the Berber carpet, stood, and closed his briefcase. Then he swept down the hardwood hallway, locked the doors behind him, and caught the train home. It was running late, as usual, but it didn't really matter. Since Eileen had passed, there had been little reason to be punctual. He still was, though. And it still surprised him when his wife didn't greet him at the door with a pair of bright blue eyes and stick-your-feet-to-the-floor kiss. Was she gone so soon?

And where was his son when he needed company? And his daughter when he wanted to engage in debate? Pavlov, for all his methodical examination, still couldn't produce an answer. A woman on the train beside him dropped her baby's bottle and it splattered all over his trousers. Her apologies were profuse, but he just smiled and helped her pick up her things. The scent made him miss his children even more.

On reaching home, Pavlov Arkadievich had habits which he followed religiously. First, he had to remind himself that Eileen was not going to be at the door and steel himself for that disappointment. Then, once in the foyer, he removed his shoes and slipped his big feet into a battered pair of black Converse All-Stars. THEN he went upstairs and changed into REAL clothes (jeans and a sweater, most of the time). What he refused to admit to anyone other than himself was that he despised Italian-leather loafers and everything they stood for, or didn't. Then he switched the TV on. Didn't touch it, mind you. Just nudged the electro-magnetic field around switch and began flipping channels.

He then poured himself a glass of scotch, settled into his easy chair, and it was only by chance that he looked at the phone. _Two _voice mails? Ah? What was the world coming to? His home number had been unlisted since he and his bride had purchased the flat in 1970. He turned the volume on the TV down by hand and then punched the button.

"Two unheard messages: _first_ unheard message sent today at _4:_5_3 _pm: beeeeeeeeep: "Pavlov! My dear dear friend….."

The lawyer's ears rang. His stomach churned.

"You're wondering , of course, 'why? After all these years why?' Allow me to say that I've made the acquaintance of your charming daughter and I am quite….impressed. Please, do return my call." (the statement clipped, chilled) "We have much to discuss."

Pavlov paused the entire apparatus, his long, gnarled hands trembling as they gripped one another. His palms literally ITCHED with the impulse to pick up the phone and call his son-Sasha are you safe, are you well- but what if there was a trace on his phone calls? Stryker had the momentum and he had the advantage. Stryker. _Stryker. _ What could he do?

Certainly not _panic._

And then, oddly enough….he followed the impulse to listen to the second message.

"Uh…hello? Listen, bub, we gotta talk. Like now. Stryker's got one of your kids and my brother. Pav, this is going to get ugly before it heals over. You need to call this number as soon as you are able. The folks there will put you in touch with me." Lucky Jim Logan rattled off a phone number and hung up.

Pavlov took a long long breath. He picked up a small rucksack hanging over the back of his kitchen chair, flipped on the radio and turned the volume back up on the TV remotely. Patience. He needed patience here. A knife, a loaded .44 magnum revolver and three quick loaders, two water bottles, and his wallet dropped into the rucksack. He slipped into a wool pea coat and traded the Converses for a pair of hiking boots.

He listened to the second message again, memorizing the number. Then he unfurled his long legs and walked like he was on the trap lines once more. The train station was three blocks away. There was a teenager on the corner screaming at his girlfriend on an iPhone. The lawyer plucked it from the kid's hand economically, apologized to the slighted girlfriend, and hung up. The kid made to swing at him, and Pavlov realized he still had it when he popped the kid's wrist out at a 90 degree angle from his forearm.

He walked to the train, remembering the predator that curled around the base of his spine and just how that old feller worked. Arkadievich had never expected to have to use him again, but then again, he had never expected a lot of things in his 68 years.


	18. Your Nerves, My Constant Companion

0oooooooo00000000ooooo0000

Professor Xavier's long silence in the moments after Logan's call was noteworthy. He appeared serene, but Jean detected something that he would not say openly.

"Is he alright?" she asked, leaning forward.

"Well, no…but he is _physically_ unharmed."

Jean raised an eyebrow at the statement. He'd just told her everything and nothing in one fell swoop. Characteristic of the professor that was not.

He gave her the license plate number and she ran it. Ororo hacked a satellite and they got eyes on the semi. She told The Professor. The Professor called Logan. Then they waited for three hours.

The next pertinent phone call came from a man named Pavlov Arkadievich. The Professor took that call personally and it lasted all of eighteen seconds.

Jean raised an eyebrow at that as well, pausing in mid-fidget. She did not broach the question for a full minute, while Xavier watched Kitty climbing the old live-oak outside his office window.

"So where do we stand on this, sir? Is he okay? Does this require action?"

Charles Xavier laughed quietly. "Jean, there's no need to fuss. And very little you need to trouble yourself about. This is a thing that Logan needs to do on his own. We are merely database and support."

Jean continued to fidget. The Professor remained unperturbed.

0oooooooo00000000ooooo0000

The plane landed not long after the 'juniper' comment. Creed stood up slowly, making a point to stay with The Squeak. Stryker made a point to leave Creed alone. Silent agreement brooked a discussion, but Creed was more concerned with the girl at the moment.

It intrigued Stryker, the way that Creed kept up with her. Creed wasn't fucking her. That much was obvious. The young woman would be much more battered. There would be scars. There would be bruises and scratches-other than the obvious. She was going to need surgery once they arrived. She should not have survived at all, really. But that surprising little windfall had just made things so much simpler for him. Quite a bit less messy.

He watched as the young woman gripped Creed's big paw, sucking in a gasp at a sudden shift in the motion of the stretcher. She was pale, shocky. Creed was hulking, territorial. Beauty and The Beast ala Macabre Theater. Bad Shakespeare, honestly. Stryker sniggered low in his throat and waited until they made the trucks before he called the compound.

"They're in the second van. Treat the woman with kid gloves, Ayumi. I want Creed incapacitated. If he becomes a problem, we're fucked."

Ayumi's voice was a little rough. "Of course, Colonel."

"You sound like you have a cold, Ayumi."

"No sir. Just took a lick to the throat earlier this morning during PT. Thank you for asking, sir."

"We'll need chambers prepped for both of these individuals. And I want the entire staff on hand whenever we bring Mr. Creed in."

"Sir…."

He headed off the question. "When we arrive, Ayumi. I'll explain what I can when we arrive."

0oooooooo00000000ooooo0000

Logan was two hundred miles north now, and had pulled over. He was pacing when Pavlov finally got hold of him. The cell phone was set to vibrate, so when it finally went off he dropped it in surprise. Scooping it up, he flipped the thing open.

"Pav."

"Jim, what's happened to my family?" The voice was not as steady as Logan remembered, but it still had that toothed edge-the kind that either makes a voice blend well with the background noise or grab at the recesses of your mind depending on the situation.

"What's been happening to your family since Stryker discovered you, bub. Katya's car took a broadside from a semi on the driver's side."

There was a quiet, crackling pause while Pavlov absorbed this. "You said she was still alive?"

"Vic's attached to her. If there's hope at all, he'll _make_ her stay awake."

Pavlov's stomach turned, remembering Victor Creed as he did. "Do you know where they're headed?"

"Alkali, I think. That's a damn thousand miles from me, Pav, and you too, if you're still in Ottawa. Our best option might be…"

"Quit thinking. I'm better at it. But you might be right. And it'd certainly take less effort."

"Are we talking about the same thing?"

"Call him?"

"Yeah."

"Then let's call him."

The team-mates paused, neither one of them liking the idea of willingly handing Stryker a winning poker hand-King, Queen, a pair of aces, one of which was wild, and if Stryker had found Sasha, then he had his Jack to go with the rest of the face cards.

"Shall I?" Pavlov asked it with a tone of duty, the one Logan had despised when they were working together.

"Nah. I'll do it. Get rid of the duty."

"They're my _children._" Pavlov gripped the iPhone.

"He's my brother. Suck it up, Pav. And get your damned game on."

The old lawyer took a long breath. "I haven't contacted Sasha."

"I can do that too. I doubt Stryker has trace on this phone. I'll call both of'em. You just stay put where you're at."

"I'm on a train, Jim."

"I could tell. Keep riding west. Stryker'll pick you up 't some point."

"Keep in touch."

"Likewise. Out."


	19. Indefatigable

A/N: Folks, I am sooo sorry it's taken me this long to get a chapter up. Real life, apparently, has rabies, or thinks that I should be exposed to said virus. (snickers) Fallout from that's been um...interesting. BUT! On with the chapter! Here it is!

* * *

Pavlov hung up the phone and sighed as the train rattled west. That was the first time he'd spoken to anyone on his team in over thirty years. The memories moved around him; that whacked out little Brit with the talent for electricity. John. Dukes-Pavlov remembered hearing Dukes singing something about being put on a west bound train in a coffin in the pouring rain-and he looked out the window. Sure enough, the sky hung low on the horizon like a sooty cape. Five hundred miles west of Ottawa, Stryker's people were waiting for him at the station when he got off. It had begun to rain.

0oooooooo000000000ooooo0000

Logan called Pavlov's boy first. A woman answered the phone.

"Uh, yes ma'am. I need to speak to Sasha Pavlovich…"

"You'll have to give him a moment. He's out in the shop."

"Okay. I'll wait."

He heard a door slapped open. A faint screech of "Saaaaash! Phone!" Thumping. Domestic sounds. The kid had a woman. Damn.

"Pavlovich. What can I do for you?"

"Well bub, it's more like what I can do for you. I'm calling for your father."

He listened as the kid sat down abruptly. "Is he hurt?"

"Not that I know of. Not just yet. Listen, Sasha. Your dad is in with some pretty rough people in

the mutant community and there's things on the line. Like your life. Okay? You need to understand that, and you need to save your questions for later."

Sasha said nothing, waited. Logan took that as a good sign. Pav's sense in the kid.

"You need to take your woman and get the hell out of Grande Cache. Your best bet is Wilmore. I know, I know. It's damn December. But if you're there, that's the last place they're gonna look for you. Understand me? These people are military trained and funded. They are out to capture you and they'll kill anything they come across that gets between you and them. Do you understand me?"

"I understand. I don't guess the why's all that important right now, huh?"

"Nope."

"I got one question."

"Use it wisely, bub. It's the only one you're gonna get."  
"Is my sister okay?"

There was a long pause on the end of the line. Then "No. No, bub. She's not."  
The bells rang in Sasha's head. "Who ARE you?" he demanded.

"It's better you don't know, kid. I promise you."

Logan disconnected the phone.

0oooooooo000000000ooooo0000

Sasha shot to his feet as soon as the phone-line went dead. He began to pace, Moira's eyes following him back and forth across the front room of their house like a metronome. He seemed like he was ready to float off the floor with the tension.

She sat down her mug, waiting. Sasha regarded her for a beat, and then headed for the hall tree and his parka. Moira did not ask if he wanted company. She just stepped into her boots, grabbed her coat, and followed him out the door. They got to the truck before he spoke.

"We're going to Irina Andreiovna's."

She didn't ask why. He'd explain himself. It took Sasha a while to come out and say what he was planning. Once he did, it made excellent sense. She just cuddled closer to him in the cab for warmth. The heater wouldn't be wound up enough to warm the truck until they were halfway down the mountain.

Sasha reached out and turned the radio on, flipping to a country station and letting his brain drift between his woman and the lonesome chords. He and Katya had always known, from the time that they were small, that if they wanted answers about anything in the world they would find them at Irina Andreiovna's. That still held true.

Moira was warm by the time they arrived, and she beat Sasha to the door with the key. She had always made him laugh because of that. She was a fire salamander; let her get cold and she was like Katya's coffee sludge, oozing from place to place with little or no attention to speed. Provide a little heat and her energy level flew out the roof. He had long since given up trying to keep pace with her.

0oooooooo000000000ooooo0000

The bike died a hundred miles south of Alkali Lake, and then Logan started out on foot. Pavlov was around three hundred miles away, but en route. He was politely approached, politely tranquilized, and when he came to on the floor of the van he was just as politely beaten about the head and shoulders.

0ooooooo0000000ooooo0000

It was dark, so catching the motion from the strike team in tandem with watching the medical personnel in their white flying out from the doorways was just luck.

The vans rolled to a stop. He was quivering and Katya was asleep. She flinched at the jerky stop, and then cocked an eye at him.

"Mr. Creed….."

He looked away from the window and she took one massive paw between her hands.

"I'll be alright. They know I'm fragile. They'll treat me like it for a good while. At least until they know that I can take a beating. And you…you need to worry about yourself. You know that, right?"

"Don't f-in' tell me what to do."

She chuckled. "Did you just edit yourself?"

The van door slid open and then all hell broke loose.

The strike team was keyed up and Creed didn't have much choice but to light their worlds on fire for a while. He heard the Squeak say something angry. One idiot made a dive at him-they were coming at him in a phalanx, of all things. Something stung. It made him sick. Whatever they'd shot him up with made him sick. But he broke the first one's neck with a *choonk* sound, punched throats, and then took the next three. Anything so patterned should never be used on an animal. It was too easy to see.

Katya would tell him later that he'd killed eight normals. Eight of'em, she'd said, half-impressed.

All he really knew was that when he woke up, he wasn't able to smell The Squeak any longer and that he was coated in blood to the elbow. A seizure was coming down the pipe.


	20. Minor Deceptions

The first thing she knew after she lost track of Creed was that there was someone in her room.

"Hi," he said brightly. "How are you doing?"

Katya jerked upright, or tried to. She wasn't exactly mobile yet. Her entire left side caught fire and it was all she could to do lay her body back down. She was crying. The male nurse leaned over with a perfunctory grace and caught the tears on a knuckle. "I suck," she choked.

"No you don't," he stated simply. Katya drew her breath for half a second, and another sob jerked to the surface. And then another. She gripped the covers on the hospital bed as the tears wracked her system. Pain shattered her resolve not to give these people anything and she just cried. The nurse paused after moment, sat on the edge of the bed, and put his own warm hand over hers. Katya didn't bother to keep track of how long he sat there with her. All she really knew was that he didn't get up until she stopped crying, and that he didn't leave the room until her pain had abated and she had gone to sleep.

Peace. Peace?

Did she even know how to process that anymore? Hadn't it been too long?

The next few days (days?) had Katya drifting back and forth. She'd been through surgery, going by the sutures up her side and down her arm and leg. Those were going to scar over top of the old ones, the ones that Sasha had given her. She'd been on pain meds too, and they just made her loooooooopy as all hell. Half the time she couldn't remember her own name, and the other half of the time she was too aware of her surroundings to miss anything. Or anybody. Or a certain body.

The male nurse's name was Nicholas. Katya couldn't keep herself from saying it all the way out, even though he'd told her that it was okay to call him Nick. Nicholas just rolled off of the tongue so nicely. He was as good as he seemed. He worked the night shift, so he was there for her a lot. Pain gets worse at night. It's a fact of life, a truth of nature.

When she began to come out of it, Katya's brain became hungry. She started asking questions about the chemical makeup of the drugs that Nicholas couldn't answer. She began testing her arm. Her swearing became florid and creative. And finally, after she had fussed enough, and had made enough attempts to get mobile, Colonel William Stryker came to call.

He stuck his head around the door at eleven in the morning, at least according to the clock. Katya didn't actually know what time it was because the room she'd been surviving in had no windows and felt underground. She sat up very straight in the bed, tight lipped.

"Miss Pavlovna! How are you this morning?"

"I don't really know that it's morning, Colonel Stryker. I haven't left this room for quite some time."

"That's exactly what I want to talk to you about…."

"Good. If you're going to make a lab rat out of me the least you can do is give me an explanation. I reckon the subject's owed that much."

He chuckled, hiked his pants a little as he sat down in the bedside chair. Nicholas was the last person that had sat there, and Katya could still feel the warmth he carried with him. She hung on to that, because Stryker was freezing everything out.

"Well….what would you like to know?"

"Everything," she replied simply.

Stryker was uncomfortable with that. There was a pull at the corner of his right eye.

"Where is Mr. Creed?" There. She'd been setting on that for days, it felt like.

"Here in the compound."

"I want to know what you're doing to him, Colonel. I'm not inclined to trust you."

"I must ask," Stryker leaned forward. "What makes you inclined to trust Mr. Creed?"

Katya shrugged, and then smelled something that made her world get a lot larger than the room she was in. It couldn't be. It shouldn't be. She disregarded Stryker's question.

"What sort of work was my father doing for you?"

Stryker followed the turn in her brain. He hadn't expected her to be so twisty, but then again, Pav himself had been full of surprises too.

"He did a lot of specialty work for me, Katya. May I call you Katya?"

"No, you may not." She crossed her arms. "Go on?"

"Your father is a very gifted individual, Miss Pavlovna. He's good with electricity and magnetic fields."

Katya shook her head, stopping herself from musing out loud. What she wouldn't GIVE for paper! Or better, a WHITEBOARD. Yeah, a whiteboard. Her brain started burning, and conversation with Stryker took a backseat to computation that she didn't even bother to hang on to at the moment. Her questions started rattling like a belt-fed machine gun, and Stryker was delighted. She was exactly what he'd expected, and there is nothing more gratifying than finding out that your assumption is right.

0oooooo0000000ooooo0000

The second time Creed came to, he was chained to the floor. The fact was duly noted and just as duly rectified. Three to one didn't make a whole lot of difference when he was armed with a pair of log chains and the mammoth bolts. He made up for lost time. They'd seen the seizure. Sure. They didn't know what triggered the sucker though. He lay waste. He kept them off of him. He scented desperately every time they opened the door for cinnamon, and didn't catch any. Tranquing him wasn't exactly an option, so he lived like a prisoner. Food slid through a slot on the bottom side of the door. They took their sweet time about getting it there.

He had been in the cell for eight days by his count when Stryker came down for a chat smelling like limes and oranges and it startled Creed into stillness. He stood quietly, watching the Colonel as he came down the hallway on the other side of the plate glass and paused at his door. He knocked.

"M'not buyin' any, Stryker, but you can come in if ya like. If you're feeling lucky." He chuckled. _Do ya feel lucky, punk?_ Dirty and hairy he was, but he didn't look a 'tall like Eastwood.

Stryker swept the door open and stepped into the room in a very familiar manner.

"Mr. Creed, I'd appreciated it if you'd cooperate."

"You haven't given me a reason, Colonel." He shrugged and rolled his shoulders. "The last time I was a guest of the Alkali compound you tried to kill me. That's your ultimate goal anyhow, ain't it?"

"She's dying, Mr. Creed."

The big feral stopped in his pacing long enough to take a good pull on the air. "She doesn't smell like it, Colonel."

Stryker raised an eyebrow. Creed kept pacing, but the colonel held absolutely still for almost five seconds.

"Huh," he finally remarked.

"What?" Creed shrugged mid-pace and kept moving. He had seen Stryker's error as soon as the man walked through the door. The colonel hadn't realized it until now. You shouldn't trust an animal to act like an old man just because you are one yourself. Creed stepped into Stryker's range and poked the colonel in the throat, hard, with two fingers.

He snickered while he flew down the hallway, trailing his chains like the ghost of Alkali Future.

Stryker cackled around his ruined throat as he watched the feral run.


	21. Management Team

"But Katya!" Nicholas was walking behind her, keeping a hand at the small of her back as she clung to the railing along the wall. "It doesn't make any sense!"

"The fact that he showed up? Or the fact that I'm worried about him?"

"All of it! I mean…come on. He leads you on. He drops bits and pieces of information. He's cuddly then he breaks you nose… Has it occurred to you that you are being used?"

"Yup." She paused for a moment to catch her breath, and then went back to putting one foot in front of the other.

"So why?" Nicholas's eyes were wide with straight up concern.

"Because the longer I hang around that damned feral the more I learn about my own origins!"

Nick hadn't an answer for that. He stayed with her down to the end of the hall and back, and then put her to bed. She was hurting more than she let on. He knew it, too, and dug a heated blanket out of the cart in the hall.

"Here. This won't help the pain in the long run, but you might be able to sleep."

Katya thanked him with her eyes and drifted out.

Nick sat backwards on the hospital chair and waited until she was under. Then he got up, strolled out, and locked the door to her room behind him. Stryker said they were going to need her in a few hours. The old man wasn't holding up to questioning too well at all, from what he understood. Someone had sighted a massive feral up top, but he wasn't worried about that. He had other things needing attending.

Out of the hospital wing, down three floors, and into a different set of scrubs. A pair of gloves. Metal doors swung open.

"You _monster!_" Pavlov Arkadievich roared, lunging to the end of his chains like a rabid wolf-hound, the tendons on his neck corded out, straining, angry, and….-well imagine that, thought Nick. He's biding his time.

"Yup!" Nick smiled cheerfully and stepped into Arkadievich's space. Pavlov bit down on his neck HARD, but he still managed to tranq the long-ass sunuvabitch and strap him to the gurney.

Pavlov was out cold when the alarms went off. Nick swore floridly. He had an unresponsive subject and a damn feral that everybody else was supposed to be keeping an eye on was LOOSE. Fuck.

The phone beeped and he picked it up off the hanger. "What?"

"You've guessed?"

"Yes."

"He's in the north wing. Uncontained."

"Of course. What the hell do you want me to do? I've got two subjects, BOTH of whom he's interested and there's not much at my disposal that can stop him!"

"Keep your cool, Mr. Cook. I'll keep you apprised of the situation." Ayumi hung up the phone and took a breath, straightening her shirt. This was going to be a very very long day.

0oooooo0000000ooooo0000

Stryker was unable to speak, but he could write like motherfucker and that was annoying. The old man's knuckles were white, clenching the pen between his first and second finger. Ayumi's patience wore very thin that evening. Eight men died within the first four hours after Creed's escape, and then he made the lower reaches of the complex and her hopes in hell of locating that particular piece of gum on her shoe became less and less likely. She knew from experience how hard he was to handle. Last time they'd had to pin him down at the bottom of a forty-foot deep reservoir tank. Creed had killed her brother that night. It had been her pleasure to seal him in that barrel.

Pavlov and Katya were their trump cards. If they could convince him that Katya was in danger; if they could convince him that Pavlov was betraying him. Or better, if they could pull his damn brother in out of the woods and announce his presence, they might be able to do something. But right now, there was a prehistoric cat loose in their basement and it was killing everything it came across.

Between that and the fact that her boss was literally speechless, Ayumi didn't have it to well.

That being said: she had a job to do.

Stryker's rasp brought her out of her reverie as he angrily shoved the pad of paper into her hand. The first thing that jumped off of the page were the words **KILL HIM. **


	22. Splinters

A/N: Took a detour into real life, y'all! Sorry it's taken me so long! (winces) Enjoy...

Working his way from the bottom up was not a position Victor Creed was used to putting himself in. It worked for the situation, but…..really? Really? Eight dead men wasn't a problem. The rest of the crew setting up top wasn't a problem. The problem wasn't even that he was running around in a basement with nothing but a pair of jeans to his name.

His problem was thus. Katya was alive. Pavlov was in the compound -he'd smelled that on Stryker too- and if Pavlov was here, so was his brother. He could blow the compound. It would take very little effort. Between the steam shafts and all the other goodies that get left in the basement of top-secret military bases, he had enough material to obliterate the entire compound. Sure. He could do that.

But The Squeak couldn't.

So that meant doing things the hard way. He waited four or five hours, stayed pretty well hidden, let them get tired of being wound so tight. Then he moved.

The first three stories were frighteningly simple. He wondered if Stryker was playing him, if the little Asian broad he'd seen on the way in had a silver-painted fingernail in the pot. He met resistance and picked up weaponry on the fourth story up. The faint smell of limes and oranges filtered down through the elevator shaft and he wondered if they hadn't moved her. He thought about it, and then followed his nose like a good tracker. Right up a running elevator shaft.

Eh. He could afford to get knocked around a little bit.

0oooooo0000000ooooo0000

Katya started pacing shortly after she woke up. She paced for a good hour. Nicholas showed up, an alarmed look on his face. "Geez, woman!"

"What?" She shook her head and chuckled. "I'm alright!"

"How long have you been on your feet, ya crazy?"

"Oh, about an hour or so. I'm hungry, Nick!"

"Yeah yeah." He chuckled and took her elbow. "Shall we?"

"Dance? Not yet."

"The cafeteria, nut-ball."

Katya paused, looked at him very pointedly, and at least he had the decency to blush.

"Cute."

They made their way at Katya-speed down the hallway toward the caf. She felt soooo much better. But her brain was cranking. So was her mouth-she couldn't help it. Couldn't keep it all inside her brain, so it had to go somewhere, and do something.

Nick catalogued silently. She was getting more and more stable all the time. And when she finally DID turn a suspecting eye on him-he knew it was coming, it always came-he was going to have his hands as full with her as he had them full with her father. Challenges, the both of them. He hoped to God that Pavlov Akadievich hadn't procreated anything else.

0ooooooo0000000ooooo0000

"Wha…" Moira paused as Sasha dropped down on one knee by the stairwell.

"It's something Dad showed me. He had this-" Sasha felt along the wall until he found what he was looking for and gave the slim board a rap-"thing for false walls and shit."

A door you would not have thought to look for sprang open. Moira had always thought of the spaces under stairwells as good hide-and-seek spots. She had never equated them to a set of stairs running down into the dark.

Sasha stood up and smiled. "Presenting The Lair!" He snickered and allowed her to step through first, turning on the light behind her. Moira walked downward into a room that, _clearly_ was not the basement to Irina Andreiovna's house. There were no jars on shelves. The old exercise bicycle was nowhere to be seen. The wardrobe holding all of Irina's furs would not be found in this room.

THIS room-this was a war room. A large Two of the walls were covered in maps. The fourth, and the one farthest from the door, was entirely covered in an old blackboard. The blackboard itself was splattered with diagrams, lists, names. The third wall, behind the stairs she was walking down, was dark, and looked to be supporting a pegboard. Sasha stepped behind the stairs, flipped a switch, and-

"Well," Moira said. "That's one way to prepare for the end of the world."

"Yeah. Dad liked weapons."

"I can see that. We have a plan, I assume?"

"Yes." Sasha pulled the half-empty bottom drawer on a filing cabinet completely out, and flopped it up on the empty table. "You're looking for the names 'Logan' or 'Creed' in these. I'm gonna go through this one." He yanked another out and set it down across from Moira's.

"Reasoning?"

"Gut right now. If the information I think is here shows up, then I'll have a reason for the suspicions and we'll move on'em."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Plan B."

Moira laughed and sat down in an old folding chair to sort through the piles, knowing full well that Sasha didn't have a clue what Plan B entailed.


	23. Below it all

-Fred?-

-The tank?-

-(nods)-

-Yeah I got that.-

…Logan couldn't help but remember that for some reason. And he was really sorry about what happened to Dukes. It hadn't been his fault, but that ol' boy had always had a likeable streak, simple as he was.

And Victor calling him out as he walked away. "We can't just let you walk away. You know that, right?"

He had. And they'd hunted him and he'd despised his brother and then Stryker'd nailed him through the skull. As he settled in his hole-in-the-ground, the scents working their way up from the bottom of the compound, he could smell his brother. He could smell the Cinnamon Girl. And he KNEW Pavlov was in deep deep trouble. The bitterness in the air was not something he could mistake. He'd smelled Pavlov near death before. Logan could smell it again, now.

He remembered Victor telling him to stay down, too. Fight in the lumber yard. "Tell me somethin', Jimmy. Was she worth it?"

Funny how the shoe was on the other foot now.

Vic wasn't going to admit it.

Logan was pretty comfortable. He'd crawled in beneath a shale overhang, had good concealment and the beautiful thing was the smoke broke up on its way out through the brush and the damp of the snow coming in broke the scent up. He wasn't fortified, and he was well aware of the fact that they knew he was there, and that they knew he knew they knew he was there, but still.

All he had to do was wait on Vic.

He dreamed about Kayla that night. Among other things.

And when he woke up, he actually felt VINDICATED about taking that bike from Scott. And realized that he was going to have to have a long ass talk with the professor. Figured. Charles Xavier was a man who ALWAYS knew more than he let on.

0oooooooo000000000ooooo0000

They'd each gone through two cups of tea before Sasha found the files he was looking for and started diagramming. Moira didn't bother to follow the quick twists of his hand as it rattled across the board. She just waited until the diagram became visible and started following the connections.

"Mutant?"

"Uh-huh."

"Your dad's a mutant?"

"Uh-huh."

"And you think Katya..."

"I KNOW Katya's a mutie."

"Are you sure she's not just…?  
"Positive."

Moira decided to take the better part of valor and hold her questions until this venture was through. Dates spanning from the late '40s to present sprang across the blackboard and she began to wonder just what else Pavlov Arkadievich had gotten himself into over the years. She started seeing words like 'unit' and 'objective' and 'Weapon X' on the board and realized, after a bit, that they probably had cause to be alarmed.

0oooooooo000000000oooo00000

Holy GOD I LIVE! (and so, incidentally, does this story.)


End file.
